Lots of Work and Plenty of Travel Already in 2018

Hello there and a Happy Belated New Year! I am writing this post at the Atlanta airport lounge, waiting for my flight to Huntsville, replacing the one that was just cancelled a couple of hours ago. Yes, IT IS WINTERTIME and it is coming down hard on the South now, after hitting the North-East of the US.
After a demanding and successful trip to Taiwan and Mainland China (with the Kaohsiung Symphony then with the players of the Hungarian Radio Symphony) I traveled back to Budapest for a couple of days (FYI Turkish Airlines is great!) then packed again to drive to the city of Pecs, where I got to conduct the great Pannon Philharmonic Orchestra. We presented an exciting program, including my piece, Drums Drums Drums, of which we played the Hungarian premiere. Other pieces on the program were: Weill: Little Threepenny Music, Stravinsky: Concerto in D for string orchestra and Hindemith’s powerful Concertmusic for brass and strings. As for Drum Drums Drums, it is now the third set of soloists playing it (however the drum-set part was played by the amazing Gergo Borlai again, who has been part of the World Premiere in Huntsville in 2015), and the piece, I am happy to report, works really well for the audience.
After spending a couple of days in beautiful Southern Hungary (Pecs is only about a 2hr drive from Budapest) I was ready to fly to the Big Apple. Representing Armel Festival as its Artistic Director I have attended 5 shows at the Prototype Festival. I have seen staged concert albums, multi-media music theater works and operas in the traditional sense. It was an impressive line up. I hope that Prototype Festival can become a partner for Armel by as early as 2020, and together we can bring some interesting new works to Budapest, Vienna, and to the screen of ARTE TV as well. Yes, IT IS WINTERTIME, and NYC was way colder than usual. However in the summer I always complain about humidity and high temperatures in manhattan. 🙂
I am ready for a couple of extremely exciting and challenging programs in the next couple of weeks. On Saturday with the Huntsville Symphony I will be conducting Brahms’ Haydn Variations, Beethoven’s Symphony No.7, and sharing the stage again with Elina Vähälä from Finland, who’ll be playing Berg’s beautiful Violin Concerto. More information on the concert here:

http://www.hso.org

After Huntsville it’s Budapest time again, and time for music about machines with the Danubia Symphony at the Liszt Academy. Yes, you read that right, MACHINES!

More about that later!

Until then, here is the link for your enjoyment:

http://www.odz.hu

Queen Of The Night and Private View

Tonight we concluded the 2015 Armel Opera Festival in Budapest, Hungary with two one act operas performed by the Josef Kajetán Tyl Theater (Plzeň,Czech Republic). The international jury Esther Lehoczky, Commissioning Editor of the Arts Department of Arte TV, Henry Little, Chief Executive of Orchestras Live, Dieter Kaegi, General Director of Theater and Orchestra of Biel-Solothurn-Bienne/Soleur, Kjell Englund, Managing and Artistic Director of Norrlandsoperan, Umea, Sweden and myself decided on Best Performance and Best Singer of this year’s festival.
French soprano Marlène Assayag won Best Singer Award for her performance in The Magic Flute directed by Robert Alfoldi.
Best Performance Awared went to: Van Parys: Private View performed by Muziektheater Transparant (Antwerpen, Belgium), directed by Tom Creed.
The Jury decided to give a Special Award to Pannon Philharmonic for their outstanding work in Donizetti’s The Siege of Calais and in Van Parys: Private View.

Everyone can cast a vote online for one production during the next four weeks.
Click here:
http://concert.arte.tv/fr/search/site/armel
The production that gets the most votes from the audience will be presented a prize once the voting ends. Please consider watching this years performances and voting for the one you think is the best!

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