Hungarian music, art and culture seem to be everywhere you look in Brussels at the moment as arts organisers make the most of Hungary chairing the EU presidency for the first half of 2011.
My first taste of the classical music offerings will be tomorrow evening (Jan. 26) with the Hungarian National Orchestra playing Liszt’s Hungarian Coronation Mass and Bartok’s Concerto for orchestra. Speaking at a press conference in Brussels today, conductor Zoltan Kocsis said that he had chosen these two particular Hungarian composers because Liszt is generally considered a Romantic composer and Bartok a radical modernist. And yet, to Kocsis’s mind, the opposite is almost the case as Liszt broke new ground and Bartok’s music includes many “classical phenomenons”.
Kocsis went on to describe the inventive and fantastic way in which Liszt brought Hungarian rhythm and religious music together in the Coronation Mass and how, in general, Liszt is a much more important composer than he is often given credit for. “Liszt is definitely a first-rate composer,” Kocsis said.
As for Bartok’s Concerto for orchestra, Kocsis highlighted two interesting features in the five-movement symphony, firstly the play between pairs and later trios of instruments, and then the homesickness of Bartok’s exile in the US evoked in the third and later movements. “You can hear how he desired to back to Hungary, which he wasn’t able to do,” Kocsis said.
An inspiring introduction by the conductor. Can’t wait to hear his orchestra.
