Diary of the Presidency - Hungarians in focus

Starting on 3rd February, a 2-month long programme series took place in the BOZAR cultural centre in Brussels. Hungary in Focus featured various music, film, fine art, literature and dance theatre performances, drawing attention to the rich culture of the presidency holder country.

Hungary represented itself in Spain as well: Portrays, Gypsies, Portrays of Gypsies was the title of the photo exhibition which opened on 9th February in the Museum of Ethology in Valencia, in partnership with the Hungarian Museum of Ethnography.The display is still on until 30th June, depicting Spanish and Hungarian Romas and the history of their social reputation in these countries. Another exhibition was launched on 14th February in Madrid: the most important one-hundred photos of André Kertész were put on show in the Fundación Carlos de Amberes. Born in 1894 in Budapest, Kertész belonged to an exceptionally talented generation of photographers who were growing up and embarking on a career in the first decades of the 20th century. But he was the one that the French press even called „the most creative photographer of the 20th century”, on the occassion of his retrospect exhibition in the Jeu de Paume in Paris.

Between 12th and 16th February, Hungary - along with Austria, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia - took part in Cinema Total, an event for film professionals and also a supporting programme of the most illustrious event in European filmmaking, the Berlinale. It was a plus that after many years of hiatus, a Hungarian film managed to make it to the 61st International Film Festival in Berlin, which started on 10th February: Tarr Béla’s Torinói ló (The Turin horse) had been selected by the organisers of the festival out of 4000 entries.

Of course the Liszt Year continued in February, too, focusing on three important places in the life of the great composer. In Paris, the Hungarian Institue organised a series of seven piano concerts, featuring Alex Szilasi, Jenő Jandó, Gábor Csalog, György Oravecz, Károly Mocsári and Izabella Simon on the piano, László Fenyő on viola, and Lúcia Schwarz singer, who performed the most part of Liszt’s piano works. In Bayreuth, Hungarofest Klassz Music Office organised two concerts, on 18th and 26th February, with the biggest stars of the young pianist generation in Hungary: Gábor Farkas, László Holics, István Lajkó and László Borbély played Liszt pieces  relating to Germany. In Rome on 22nd February, Dezső Ránki and Edit Klukon made an appearance in the Quirinale Palace, the official residence of the President of the Italian Republic. Pál Schmitt President of Hungary was also present at the concert, where the pianist couple played a Liszt-piece which nobody else in the world has on their repertoire: the early version of the Faust Symphony written for two pianos.

The Polyphony concert series, subtitled Unity, Diversity, Music on the A38 amusement ship also continued in full gear, with a Finnish, a Spanish and a Russian band from Vienna, supplementing a Hungarian band on the stage each time.

In the third year of the Chocolate Concert series, after the Haydn Year in 2009 and the Erkel-Mahler anniversary in 2010, it was naturally Liszt in the focus. The aim of the organisers, Hungarofest Klassz Office, was to introduce the greatest figures of classical music to the youngest audiences in a playful and interactive way. Győző Lukácsházi was the regular presenter – and also the chocolate-distributor - of the concerts, which took place on every third Sunday of the month at Millenáris.

On 25th February in the Palace of Arts, Jenő Jandó and Károly Mocsári re-animated the dual between the two 19th century pianist rivals, Franz Liszt and Sigismond Thalberg. The programme of the concert was not the exactly the same as on that ominuous evening in 1837, but the Confutatis movement from Mozart’s Requiem in Liszt’s transcription, as well as Lacrymosa in Thalberg’s transcription were part of it. Even though Jandó and Mocsári were not competing against each other, the audience could still decide based on the musical pieces if anno the guests of the Belgiojoso-saloon were right in concluding the competition in a draw.

The EUphony Central-European Youth Orchestra was assembled from young students of six distinguished music academies of the Central-European region: Budapest, Vienna, Graz, Zagreb and Ljubljana along with Belgrade and Bucharest as invited guests. At the end of February, the orchestra gave several concerts, performing works of the four most important Hungarian composers who lived between 1850 and 1950: Liszt, Dohnányi, Bartók and Kodály. Under the direction of Zoltán Kocsis, the concert series began on 26th February in the Palace of Arts, then went through all the cities mentioned above, with pianist István Lajkó also joining the orchestra on the tour.

At the beginning of the year, we followed the further development works carried out in the previous year’s Capital of Culture, Pécs. The Kodály Centre, inaugurated on 16^th December 2010 – the 128^th anniversary of Kodály’s birth - had realized a successful first two months, and we can proudly say that the success-series has not stopped ever since.

Talking about Pécs, we should not forget the Zsolnay Manufactory, as the heritage of Vilmos Zsolnayhad an important role in the EU presidency programmes, too: the international diplomats coming to Hungary and Brussels were receiving wonderful presents of china, with shiny eosin-glazing (a Zsolnay-trademark technology). Adding to that, the development works in the Zsolnay Quarter, which had been a highlighted project of the Pécs2010 European Capital of Culture activities, were also completed in the first half of 2011.

All in all, in February we carried on with the Liszt Year’s events, but there were also several other exciting and large-scale projects launched in this month – and of course, the same applies to March.