The benefit concert of Concerto Budapest for the International Children’s Safety Service on Zoltán Kocsis‘ birthday

This year, Concerto Budapest will present its long-established Ligeti birthday concert as the  "extra" performance of the viola concert series Viva La Viola! compiled by András Keller. As the first half of the concert will vividly and pleasurably attest, it proved to be an especially well-justified choice, as the great masters of contemporary music have always been intensely interested in and attracted to this often under-estimated string instrument. First we can hear György Kurtág's Hommage, which premiered in 1990 and evokes Schumann’s Märchenerzählungen (Fairy tale narrations) with its orchestration. Then comes Krzysztof Penderecki’s Cadenza written in 1984, which fully and compactly exploits the possibilities of the viola. This piece will be followed by Ligeti's six-movement solo sonata completed in 1994. The performance of the solo violists Máté Szűcs and the young Japanese performer, Nagao Haruka, promises a delightful experience. The second part of the evening will feature two quite different and differently scored representative works in György Ligeti's oeuvre: Ten Pieces for Wind Quintet penned in 1968, where each of the five instruments will – as the composer himself described – “play itself, play what’s most characteristic of it”. Then we can relish his late song cycle based on the poet Sándor Weöres’s poems, Síppal, dobbal nádihegedűvel (With Pipes, Drums, Fiddles), which – as at its premiere in 2000 – will be performed by Katalin Károlyi and the Amadinda Percussion Group.