Tag Archives: Budapest Music Center

Same Airport, Different Music

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HSV-BUD-HSV
I can definitely say that by now I know every little corner of the Huntsville and of the Budapest airports. I have seen these cities from the sky from every possible angle during take off and landing. Every time I depart and arrive however I am carrying different scores in my bag. I’ve got different music for familiar airport lounges.
This time my carry on was heavy of scores by Verdi, Telemann, David Lang
http://davidlangmusic.com/music/child
Kornel Fekete Kovacs
http://feketekovacs.com
and others.

2015 starts off with an all trumpet concert on January 5, honoring the 70th Birthday of Gyorgy Geiger, former principal trumpet player of the Hungarian Radio Symphony.
See a CD here him and I recorded together quite a few years ago:
http://amazon.com

Hungarian trumpeters from all over the world are coming together to celebrate and all of them are playing something fun. I am looking forward to a delightful mix of Baroque and contemporary music and some good times with friends who are also great musicians.
http://tarkovigabor.com
http://gabor-in-concert.com
http://www.berliner-philharmoniker.de

On January 11 Ensemble UMZE and special guest, flute player extraordinaire Claire Chase
http://www.clairechase.net
from NYC will be performing under my direction, again at the beautiful Budapest Music Center. The contemporary musical pieces on the program are all about marriage, birth, children and childhood memories. I am looking forward to hear Claire and the musicians of UMZE performing the Hungarian Premiere of my composition ‘Conversation With Children’!
Read about the concert here:
http://bmc.hu

On January 12 I will be on my way back to Huntsville to conduct Verdi’s magnificent Requiem for the classical series of the Huntsville Symphony. Then back again to Budapest…, but I will write about that in my next posts.

Here are the first two months of the New Year for me in airport codes:
HSV-BUD-HSV-BUD-HSV-BUD-HSV
Delta Lounge, here I come!

Two World Premiere Opera Recordings

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Teaching a conducting master class last week for the Eotvos Foundation at the beautiful and highly functional Budapest Music Center was demanding and a lot of fun. This week had been busier than I expected. On Monday composer Peter Eotvos and producer Laszlo Goz (owner of BMC) and myself had a chance to officially listen to the recording we made this January. I am happy to report, that “Paradise Reloaded (Lilith)” now has a rich in details, beautifully mastered reference recording. Mr. Eotvos will put a few finishing touches on the final version before the end of this year. This World Premiere opera recording will be available as part of the Budapest Music Center Eotvos series sometimes soon in 2015.

I had two days to rehearse the comic opera of Ernst von Dohnanyi
http://www.britannica.com
again (the one I premiered at the Erkel Theater this fall). We are taking this opera into the studio. Starting tomorrow (Sunday) I will be driving almost every day to
http://www.phoenixstudio.hu
where the wonderful singers and the musicians of the Hungarian State Opera will be my partners in crime to record the first ever uncut version of this delightful 20th Century comic opera. The recording will be part of the discovery CD series of Hungarian operas by the Hungarian State Opera
http://www.opera.hu
I am hoping to see the final product on the shelves as soon as February 2015.

Just to take a small break from the recording process (OK we do have a planned day off) I am driving to Vienna, Austria on Tuesday.
I’ll be meeting opera singers Rebecca Nelsen
http://rebeccanelsen.eu
and Tamara Gallo
http://www.tamaragallo.com
to do two pre-rehearsals for the February World Premiere of my Comic Opera of the Modern South, Georgia Bottoms. Sometimes in the second half of December I will be meeting stage director David Gately
http://www.davidgately.com
in the US to discuss details about the February World Premiere in Huntsville, AL.

I wish You All a Happy Holiday Season! Come back here after Christmas time to read about my New Year’s Eve concert with the Huntsville Symphony! See you Soon!

Paris, Weimar, Budapest

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The international conducting workshop organized by
http://www.eotvosmusicfoundation.org
has begun. 14 students from Paris, Weimar and Budapest are working with three professors:
Ulrich Poehl
http://www.ulrichpoehl.com
Jean-Philippe Wurtz
http://www.ensemble-linea.com
and myself.
Tomorrow afternoon the members of
http://www.thrensemble.com
will be joining us.
On the program:
Philippe Manoury: Passacaille pour Tokyo
Pierre Boulez: Derive 2
Matthias Pintscher: Occultation
Hindemith: Kammermusik no.1

We are all lucky to enjoy the luxurious facilities of the Budapest Music Center.
http://bmc.hu

The conducting workshop is supported by
Institute Francais Budapest
http://www.franciaintezet.hu
Goethe Institut Ungarn
http://www.goethe.de/ins/hu/bud/huindex.htm
Liszt Music Academy
http://zeneakademia.hu

8+1+1/2 Operas

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The next year (this time I mean 365 days and not “next season”) is about to bring 8+1+1/2 operas. Let’s start with the +1. After the successful recording session and Hungarian premiere performance of Peter Eotvos’
Paradise Reloaded (Lilith)
http://eotvospeter.com
the composer, myself and the amazing sound engineers of the Hungarian Radio have just concluded the final editing of the studio recording of this work. This hopefully means that a commercial recording of the work will be out soon, most likely with the BMC (Budapest Music Center) label. A professional TV recording of the live performance at the Palace of the Arts will also be aired on TV sometimes in 2014. I will keep you posted.
The “half opera” is in fact an adaptation of the newest music theater work by Peter Eotvos. The world premiere is just happening at the end of June in Frankfurt, Germany. The opera is called ‘The Golden Dragon’
http://eotvospeter.com/commissions
and it is based on a play by famous writer, playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig. I’ll be doing the English language adaptation of this work originally written in German. This involves adapting the text to the music (I’ll be working from the official English language translation + a raw translation of the libretto) and also doing some compositional work in case it is needed.

In the next two weeks I’ll be working with one of the professional orchestras of the city of Budapest called Concerto Budapest.
http://en.concertobudapest.hu
They reside at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music where we will be performing 5 chamber operas under the title “Operatic Sketches”. One of the works is entitled Roman Fever and was written by the head of the Composition Department, Gyula Fekete.
http://www.bmc.hu
The other four works are world premieres composed by students, sung by students of the Academy of Music. The stage director is my good friend (and writer of the libretto of my one act opera, Barbie Blue) Andras Almasi Toth.
More info here:
Operatic Sketches
http://zeneakademia.hu/en

In September 2014 I’ll be the conductor of the new fully staged production of ‘The Tenor’ by Ernest von Dohnanyi. This will be the first staging of this work since the 1930s and the season opening production of Erkel Theater. Another production I am doing at the Academy of Music is, guess what, yet another Eotvos opera. 🙂 A combined group of professional and student musicians and singers and myself are presenting ‘Lady Sarashina’
http://www.eotvospeter.com
as the closing performance of Cafe Budapest (Budapest Contemporary Arts Festival) in October, 2014. This will be the fifth Eotvos stage work I conduct.
In May 2015 I am conducting a shortened version of Ferrucio Busoni’s opera, Doctor Faust
http://en.wikipedia.org
as part of the “Faust Festival” at the Hungarian State Opera.

And finally “opera #8” and obviously the most exciting challenge for me in Season 14-15 is the World Premier of my own work
Georgia Bottoms, A Comic Opera of the Modern South
Naturally I will be posting a lot about this project. For now here is a link to the book ‘Georgia Bottoms’
Mark Childress
http://www.crazyinalabama.com

You may also look up and LIKE the page ‘Georgia Bottoms, A Comic Opera of the Modern South’ on FaceBook.

“All music –smiles the minister –is incidental”

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Tomorrow (Sunday) at 7:30PM (Budapest time) singers Alinka Kozari, Katalin Karolyi, Gyorgy Philipp, Ensemble UMZE and myself will perform an extremely versatile and exciting program. All three pieces are Hungarian Premiere. The concert is part of the program of Budapest Spring Festival 2014. The venue for the concert is the amazingly beautiful concert hall of the Budapest Music Center.
http://www.bmc.hu

Balazs Horvath ‘Assemblage’ is a composition for ensemble with instrumental soloists who also act. The violinist is the musician who wants to take over the lead from the conductor; the horn player is the actual, real “soloist” (with very difficult material to play). The bugle player is dressed as a clown and behaves as such. The bassoonist acts like “your typical orchestral musician” (not my opinion, so direct your criticism directly towards the composer! â˜ș) The ensemble enters by playing on pots and pans while the conductor leads the procession in a drum major function (I do have a real drum major baton!) There are Four Scenes and for the 4th one the musicians move to the back of the hall mirroring their downstage seating. We even take a bow at the end with our back to the audience.
This is a very well written, very well thought through “instrumental theater” piece. It is a lot of fun and all of us are having a ball.
Visit the composer’s website here:
http://www.balazshorvath.com

‘Eight Songs for a Mad King’ by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, CH, CBE, composer and conductor, Master of the Queen’s Music was written in 1969 and is still a fully valid, musically and dramatically engaging, powerful piece of music theater. (How does one become the Master of the Queen’s Music after being an experimental, avant-garde composer is a different story and should be the topic of a separate blog entry.) A strong and captivating performance is in the making with Gyorgy Philipp as “King George III” with some serious contemporary overtones in the direction of Andras Almasi-Toth. Let me just say, that while homeless people are banned from public spaces in the City of Budapest “our King George” is dressed as a bum and acts totally crazy and inappropriate. He won’t let security to remove him from the theater hall and ends up leaving on his own terms, exhausted, figuratively and literally naked with the accompaniment of the conductor and the drummer.
Here is some reading material about ‘8 Songs’:
http://www.classicalsource.com

The well-known story of the Pied Piper comes to life in the 40 minute long masterpiece by George Benjamin. Two singers (soprano and alto) are playing and acting all the characters. The Minister would do anything to get reelected. The Crowd wants only one thing, to get rid of the rats in the city. (Rats? Just watch out for the projected images in Andras Almasi-Toth’s interpretation! You’ll find even more contemporary political allusions
 Let me state at this point, that this concert was supposed to happen over a year ago. The fact, that we are playing it just two weeks before the Hungarian general election is merely a coincidence! â˜ș) And the story of the Pied Piper continues

George Benjamin’s music is almost unknown to the Hungarian audience. I am really happy to be able to present this major work of his with really great singers in both roles. Here is another great work about the power of music.
Read more about this chamber opera –about the power of music –, in a NY Times review from 2007:
http://www.nytimes.com

Tomorrow’s concert is a journey from Instrumental Theater through Monodrama to Chamber Opera; and music, of course is much more than just incidental.

Scarlatti and The Musical Robots

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On Saturday, November 30 at 5PM local time I get to conduct a concert at the helm of the Budapest Strings
http://www.budapestivonosok.hu
at the Palace of The Arts in Budapest, Hungary. The concert includes two world premieres, one by the world famous composer, Peter Eotvos. It is a composition for French Horn and string orchestra, a very elegant and sensitive piece of music. It is an honor to be able to do the World Premiere of a new composition by Eotvos, who is turning 70 in January 2014 and whom I can call my teacher and mentor in both composition and conducting.
See the composer’s webpage about this new composition entitled Hommage a Domenico Scarlatti:
http://www.eotvospeter.com

More compositions by Eotvos will be included in my 13-14 season.
As part of the so called “Mini Festival” at the end of January in cooperation with Neue Oper Wien and Palace Of The Arts I get to conduct the Hungarian premiere and the studio recording of Eotvos’ latest opera: Paradise Reloaded (Lilith).
In February Huntsville Symphony is presenting an orchestral composition of his entitled “The Gliding of The Eagle in The Skies”, and also a very interesting action-piece called “Brass The Metal Space”.
Watch my blog posts about these performances in the next few months!

The other world premiere this Saturday is that of my “Gulliver Suite” for Tubular Bells and Strings, an 11 minute long composition based on “Gulliver in Faremido”, a piece of mine for narrator and 5 players. You can buy the commercial recording of the latter piece by going on iTunes or to this website:
http://www.bmcrecords.hu
The story behind the music is based on a Gulliver-sequel by 20th Century Hungarian author, Frigyes Karinthy. In this modern voyage Gulliver ends up on a planet where robot-like beings communicate by music instead of speech. More program notes and the story itself can be found on the Budapest Music Center link above. The movements of “Gulliver Suite” are: 1) Gulliver in Faremido 2) Robot Concert 3) Story Of The Two Headed Monster 4) Be That As It May

Since the performance is part of the “Master and Student” conversation-concert series Mr. Eotvos and I will be joined by musicologist Prof. Imre Foldes. I am hoping for an interesting and stimulating conversation about the new pieces and the two Baroque compositions by Georg Philipp Telemann.
http://en.wikipedia.org

I picked Telemann’s Gulliver Suite (originally for two solo violins, but we play it with 5+4 players in a stereo setting) and one of his Horn Concertos to compliment the modern music performed. This will be my first time to work with the great, young horn player, Szabolcs Zempleni.
http://www.zempleni.com