Introductory concert series 1
In the next season of the Musicmania series, we are going to explore a single, highly significant, genre of music: the symphonic poem. But it will not be the famous pieces that we will be examining, but rather works by composers who are not heard in Hungary, but whose every single note contains a surprise. This happens sometimes through their style and sometimes through their message. Other times, it might even be the forward-looking nature of their musical ideas or even the composer’s lonely search owed to an astonishing final result.
We are omitting all of the traditionally “great” composers from the endless list of creators of symphonic poems. Although no one should count on hearing the music of Liszt or Richard Strauss, they can depend on encountering works by everyone who helped develop, expand and sustain this genre. Our composers willl include Camille Saint-Saëns, César Franck, Alexander Glazunov, Jean Sibelius, Arthur Honegger, Bohuslav Martinů, Jacques Ibert, Carl Nielsen and Anatoly Lyadov. Each and every one of them was a dazzling symphonist of an era brimming with talent who enriched the colourful palette of music history with unique tones. Now is the time to overrule our elitist judgements and get to know the masterpieces mistakenly classified as “less interesting” that these composers wrote.
Dániel Dinyés