Program, Play, Repeat, Keep It Interesting

The most difficult set of concerts I have ever done in my life was a 5 day-8 concert series with City Music Cleveland. Coming up with 8 different yet valid versions of Beethoven 8 in just 5 days was an extremely difficult task. The whole point of live music performance is to do things differently from one performance to the next. Whenever one gets to perform great war horses, like Carmina Burana, the pressure is on. You have to deliver your own version of a master piece without losing the true spirit of it. This is the real magic trick!
On Thursday the Rochester Oratorio Society, the Rochester Philharmonic, Leslie Ann Bradley, Anton Belov and Anthony Webb and myself performed a truly operatic, dramatic and at some points extremely funny Carmina Burana. I am looking forward to pulling another and different [!] rabbit out of my hat tonight.
http://rpo.org
I very much enjoyed sinking my teeth into Roberto Sierras eccentric ‘Fandangos’ and Ginastera’s ‘Four Dances from Estancia’ as well. Lots of percussion, lots of groove, lots of energy!

It is a real honor and a lot of fun to conduct the season finale classical set with the RPO! These two concerts also mark the end of my 2014-15 season. No more conducting until a couple of summer concerts in August.

Starting next week I will be teaching a 10 day master class at the Budapest Music Center.
http://bmc.hu

At the end of June I’ll be one of the judges of the International Armel Opera Competition and Festival. http://armelfestival.org

Soon I will be posting about the 2015-16 season, too.
Stay tuned!

Operas & ballets 1998-2013 (40 is the new 40/2)

Tonight is the second performance of Ferenc Erkel Istvan Kiraly (King Stephen) at the Margaret Island Open Air stage. Almost by the time we start the second half of the performance (right after the August 20 Festivities fireworks) Duna TV (Hungarian Public Media’s only satellite channel) starts the broadcast of yesterday’s performance. (21:35 local time) This is a nice occasion to list all the operas, musical theater works and ballets I have conducted in the last 15 years. My own operas are not included here.
Side note: being 40 does not feel any different than being 39. 🙂

Operas:
Bartok: Bluebeard’s Castle
Erkel: King Stephen
Peter Eotvos: The Three Sisters
Peter Eotvos: Radames
Gounod: Romeo and Juliet
Ligeti: Le Grand Macabre
Emil Petrovics: C’est la guerre
Puccini: La Boheme
Rossini: La Cenerentola
Gyorgy Ranki: The King’s New Clothes
Schoenberg: Erwartung
Verdi: Masked Ball
Wagner: Lohengrin

Fully Staged Ballets:
Bartok: The Miraculous Mandarin
Dohnanyi-Seregi: Variations on a Nursery Song
Prokofiev: Rome and Juliet

Musical Theater:
Bartok: Cantata Profana (fully staged)
Ligeti: Aventures & Nouvelle Aventures
Peter Eotvos: As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams