Bedřich SMETANA: The Bartered Bride – overture
Pyotr TCHAIKOVSKY: Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23
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Modest MUSSORGSKY – Maurice RAVEL: Pictures at an Exhibition

Valentin Magyar piano
Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra

Conductor: Carlo Montanaro

The first concert of the Hungarian National Philharmonic’s Kocsis season ticket highlights three faces of Slavic romanticism. The overture to the Czech composer Smetana’s The Bartered Bride is a rich font of energy, emotion and folk characters, while Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto in B-flat minor is an encounter of virtuosity with great feeling, and Pictures at an Exhibition is also a meeting point, this time between the Russian Mussorgsky and the Frenchman Ravel, the result of which was one of the most brilliantly arranged scores in music history. Valentin Magyar is the audience’s latest great favourite and it will be exciting to hear Carlo Montanaro, who frequently conducts masterpieces from Italian masters, interpreting a different kind of repertoire on this occasion.

Bedřich Smetana, the forerunner to Dvořák and the great trailblazer of Czech national music, wrote his three-act comic opera, The Bartered Bride, between 1863 and 1866. The work’s overture often appears on the concert programmes of the world’s great orchestras as an independent concert piece in its own right. Its main features are its sweeping dynamism, lively rhythms and folk-like quality of the characters. The Kocsis season ticket of the Hungarian National Philharmonic is conducted by Carlo Montanaro, a hugely popular figure in Budapest.

The second piece on the programme, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto in B-flat minor, is an excellent opportunity for one of Hungary’s great piano discoveries of recent years, Valentin Magyar, to show off the virtuosity and emotional richness of his playing style. The firm favourite that will complete the second part of the concert is Mussorgsky’s piano cycle, Pictures at an Exhibition, expertly arranged for orchestra by Ravel. The piece is a joyful reward for any orchestra or conductor and gives equal scope for a broad spectrum of colour to be revealed as it does for varied character depictions. If there is a composition that can without exaggeration be described as a “musical picture book”, this is it!

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The concerts on the Kocsis season ticket mainly feature 19th-century masterpieces, with a primary focus on the musical literature of the Romantic movement. Each night will feature a different large-scale, representative work: Ravel’s arrangement of Mussorgsky’s cycle Pictures at an Exhibition, the Richard Strauss symphonic poem Ein Heldenleben, Saint-Saëns’s ‘Organ’ Symphony, the Rossini Stabat Mater, and Brahms’s Symphony No. 3.

Adding yet more colour to the overall picture will be such compositions as Smetana’s Bartered Bride Overture, the Liszt symphonic poem Orpheus, and Bizet’s L’Arlésienne Suite No. 1. The selection of concertos for this subscription includes both greatest hits (Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor and Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor) and some treasures deserving wider attention (the Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor and his Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor). However, these evenings are not restricted to Romanticism or even the 19th century: we will also get to hear Debussy’s symphonic prelude L’Après-midi d’un Faune, as well as some Mozart, in the form of his Kyrie in D minor and the instrumental suite compiled from his opera Thamos, König in Ägypten.

As for the soloists: Valentin Magyar and József Balog are both local favourites when it comes to Hungarian pianists, and the voices of Selene Zanetti, Francesco Demuro, Atala Schöck and Gábor Bretz are always a delight to listen to. Also on the schedule are the world-famous French cellist Aurélien Pasca and the celebrated Russian piano virtuoso Alexander Malofeev, along with a host of international star conductors: Carlo Montanaro, Lawrence Foster, Jean-Claude Casadesus and Pier Giorgio Morandi. Taking up the baton for the final concert will be the ensemble’s general music director, György Vashegyi.