The Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra boasts a unique history among current Hungarian orchestras. It was founded as long ago as 1853 when its first resident conductor was Ferenc Erkel. He was succeeded by Sándor Erkel, István Kerner, János Richter, Ernõ Dohnányi, János Ferencsik, András Kórodi and Erich Bergel. For its first ninety years, it was formed from the top players at the Opera House and was the only professional orchestra in Hungary. They premiered numerous of the most important works of the international literature in Hungary, and worked with leading composers and performers, such as Liszt, Mahler, Richard Strauss, Bartók, Kodály and Furtwängler, Mengelberg, Failoni and others. After 1945, although it was no longer the only professional Hungarian orchestra, it continued to play an important role in Hungarian music life, working with such artists as Klemperer, Doráti, Oistrakh, Rossi, Zecchi, Zathureczky, Annie Fischer, Inbal and others, earning the ensemble international respect. In 1992, the Friends of the Budapest Philharmonic Society Foundation was formed to give it moral and financial support. In September 1997, the American conductor Rico Saccani, who had earlier worked regularly with the orchestra and was committed to its success, took over as artistic director.


Conductor Eliahu Inbal was born in Israel in 1936. He began his studies at the Jerusalem Academy and continued in Paris, Hilversum and Sienna with Franco Ferrara and Sergiu Celibidache. After winning the Cantelli Conducting Competition at the age of 26 his international career took off and he received invitations to appear with leading orchestras in Europe, the United States and Japan. He was principal conductor at the Teatro La Fenice from 1984-1987. He also appeared at the opera houses of Munich, Hamburg and Verona, and the Glyndebourne Festival. He has conducted many new productions in Paris and Zurich. From 1974-1990 he was music director of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra where in 1995 he was appointed honorary conductor. With this orchestra he made successful tours and recorded highly acclaimed complete cycles of Mahler, Bruckner, Berlioz, Schumann, Berg, Schönberg, Webern and Brahms. His Mahler recordings received the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis, the Grand Prix du Disc and the Prix Caecilia. Equally successful are his recordings of the complete works of Ravel (with the French National Orchestra), a Dvorak and Stravinsky cycle (Philharmonia Orchestra London), Shostakovich symphonies (Vienna Symphony), the orchestral works of Bartók and the symphonic poems of Richard Strauss (Orchestre de la Suisse Romande). From 1995-2001 he was chief conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of the RAI and in 2001 was nominated music director of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra for five years.

Confirm the Fringe Festival jury’s special prize with your applause!

An instrument that is ideal for Bach and Kurtág, Gypsy music and jazz. Stravinsky was so delighted by the sound that he bought one for himself. Show some consideration for your family and be content with a concert ticket!

The peacock is the most beautiful symbol of all the value and knowledge that Kodály gave to Hungarian music. Peacock Song is a stage production in which spectacle and music blend in poetic harmony to show what traditional peasant culture means for people today and how well suited it is to express modern thoughts.

A special feature of the concert created by János Tari is the film projected continuously during the performance, combining old documents with images of the world today, past and present instruments, faces and gestures, performers, creative artists, viewers and composers dependent on each other in search of a disappearing peasant culture. All this is accompanied by – and inspires – very special music, reaching out to this rich tradition at the last moment and brought to the stage today in a wonderful work by Ferenc Kiss.

Three young singers with beautiful voices well known on the world’s music stages, Szilvia Bognár, Ágnes Herczku and Ági Szalóki sing the folk music motifs, accompanied by such leading musicians as cimbalom player Kálmán Balogh, Balázs Dongó Szokolay the virtuoso of Hungarian folk wind instruments, Ferenc Kiss with his own band, the Etnofon Zenei Társulás, and the Profán string quartet.

Born in Székesfehérvár on March 30, 1955. Received a diploma in graphic art at the Hungarian College of Art, later also took part in postgraduate training there up to 1982. Rector of the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts.
In the eighties Kőnig’s works were technically and in a certain sense also stylistically uniform, while his themes appeared to be quite multifarious. His works painted in traditional, dry Flemish technique fell into roughly four groups, although these were naturally inter-related: one is the group of paintings devoted to the memory of the Baroque illusionist and proto-conceptualist, Andrea Pozzo. The second is the series painted on the basis of amateur photographs, the third is the bestiary-like portrait gallery of insane persons and cripples, and finally the fourth comprises allegorical genre paintings of 19th century literature and science. Apart from external features and the artist’s imprint, works in the various series were linked by the intention that the scenes and portraits painted with archaic realism should function as a sarcastic and in cases malicious allegory.
While the technique remained unchanged, in the nineties fundamental changes could be observed in the themes of Frigyes Kőnig’s paintings. Archaising, seemingly metaphysical city scenes, intimate interiors and still-lifes gave way to more or less fictive genres from literary history or childhood and he produced a series of sarcastically painted naked bathers. However, the change of theme and motifs did not mean a change in the way of seeing things: the intention to create spatial illusion, then its complex and witty analysis and the gesture of confusing and restructuring the perspective remained.
István Hajdu