Robert VOLKMANN:  Richard III – overture, Op. 68
György KURTÁG: Viola Concerto
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Ludwig van BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92

Máté Szűcs viola
Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra

Conductor: Domonkos Héja

The concerts of the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra’s Lukács season ticket at once offer the joys of a tantalisingly cohesive concept and compelling variety. We will hear pieces inspired by Shakespeare plays, a Hungarian composition will sound out on each occasion, and a Beethoven symphony will close out every evening. At the opening concert, the Richard III Overture by Robert Volkmann, a former teacher at Budapest’s Liszt Academy, will be followed by the Viola Concerto the now-100-year-old György Kurtág wrote in his youth, as interpreted by Máté Szűcs. After the interval, Domonkos Héja will conduct Beethoven’s ecstatic Symphony No. 7.

Robert Volkmann (1815–1883) is hardly a household name for Budapest concert-goers, even though the musician of German origin lived in the Hungarian capital for many years. He was also a respected teacher of musical composition at the Liszt Academy and an active participant in the Hungarian music scene. It is a joy to discover, therefore, that the first concert of the Lukács season ticket of the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra will feature his Richard III Overture, which was inspired by the Shakespeare play. György Kurtág’s Viola Concerto, written when the composer was still a young man, will be played in tribute to the 100-year-old composer by Máté Szűcs, who has achieved great successes worldwide. After the interval, the concert’s conductor, Domonkos Héja, will crown the evening with a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. The concerts of the Lukács season tickets promise music lovers special thematic programmes, and those attending all three concerts will on each occasion get to know a rarity inspired by Shakespeare (two in the third concert, in fact!), encounter the modern Hungarian music of the recent past, and listen to one of Beethoven’s most popular symphonies.

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The Lukács season ticket consists of three concerts full of new joys to discover. Above all, two young conductors. After taking up the baton on the first evening, the seasoned maestro Domonkos Héja will then turn it over to the 31-year-old Gábor Hontvári and the 37-year-old Dániel Erdélyi, giving them a chance to helm the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra for the second and third outings on the subscription.

The programmes, too, promise much of interest for music lovers seeking fresh experiences. These include, on the first evening, the overture to Richard III, a piece by Robert Volkmann, one of the Liszt Academy’s earliest esteemed professors and a Romantic composer in his own right, followed by a bold stylistic leap into György Kurtág’s Viola Concerto. Similarly intriguing juxtapositions will emerge in the later concerts, with Tchaikovsky’s overture-fantasia The Tempest paired with Emil Petrovics’s Cantata No. 5 in the second, and Schumann’s Julius Caesar Overture leading into György Orbán’s work for string orchestra Sopra canti diversi and Erich Korngold’s Much Ado About Nothing Suite in the third.

Crowning the more obscure music making up the first half of these quite masterfully researched concert programmes will be second halves each comprised of one of the most majestic pillars of the core repertoire in the form of a Beethoven symphony, starting with his Seventh in the first instalment, his Sixth, the “Pastoral”, in the second, and his Fifth, known as the “Fate Symphony”, in the third. As far as the soloists go, we will have Máté Szűcs, one of the most outstanding violists of our time, interpreting the Kurtág concerto, and Zsombor Cserményi singing the bass part in Petrovics’s cantata.