The Budapest Festival Orchestra Celebrates its 25th Anniversary
Quality Programme, Thrilling Performances, Intense Audience Impact
The Budapest Festival Orchestra Celebrates its 25th Anniversary
Performances in the most prestigious music halls of the world. Full house concerts and standing ovations. A series of awards and an enormous core audience. Nearly 50 records released. A festival of its own. The Budapest Festival Orchestra is celebrating its 25th anniversary.
With a deserved reputation worldwide, the orchestra was founded by the conductor Iván Fischer and the pianist Zoltán Kocsis in 1983. They envisioned a quality symphonic orchestra that would give Budapest three or four top performances every year. With this goal in mind, they invited the best Hungarian musicians to cater for audiences eager for original and high quality concerts. The orchestra functioned on an ad hoc basis, as an independent musicians' association, for 10 years.
Over the years, the orchestra has become a widely acclaimed guest in virtually all the major music centres and festivals in the world. Many international music legends have joined the orchestra for a variety of performances. Among them are Sir George Solti (who was the honorary guest conductor of the orchestra until his death), Yehudi Menuhin, Kurt Sanderling, Eliahu Inbal, Charles Dutoit, Gidon Kremer, Sándor Végh, András Schiff, Heinz Holliger, Agnes Baltsa, Ida Haendel, Martha Argerich, Hildegard Behrens, Yuri Bashmet, Rudolf Barsai, David Zinman, Radu Lupu, Thomas Zehetmair, Gennadiy Rozhdestvenskiy, Vadim Repin, Helen Donath, Richard Goode, and others. Musical director Iván Fischer has coordinated Budapest Festival Orchestra activities since the foundation of the orchestra 25 years ago.
In the meantime, the orchestra has undertaken a number of exciting projects in addition to regular concerts. Instantly successful, these include the chamber music concerts, the so-called one-forint final rehearsals with Iván Fischer's verbal introductions, the morning "cocoa concerts" for children, the free open air concerts attracting thousands in Budapest's Heroes' Square each year, and the Mahler Festival, an annual festival that the orchestra has organised every year since 2005.
Budapest Festival Orchestra opera performances - The Magic Flute, Cosi fan tutte, Idomeneo, Orfeo ed Euridice - are equally successful in Hungary and abroad. The orchestra has also been acclaimed for its interpretations of contemporary and modern music (including works by Eötvös, Kurtág, Schoenberg, Holliger, Tihanyi, Doráti, Copland, Adams, Dohnányi).
In autumn this year, the orchestra received three master violins from Peter Greiner, probably the best string instrument maker in the world. The master delivered the precious instruments to Budapest personally. This brings, together with the existing five violins and three violas, the number of Greiner instruments used by the orchestra to eleven.
The Budapest Festival Orchestra signed an exclusive agreement with Philips Classics in 1996. The resulting Bartók, Liszt, and Dvorák recordings have won a number of international awards including the Gramophone Award, the Diapason d'Or, as well as Telerama and Le Monde de la Musique awards. The orchestra also signed a long-term agreement with Channel Classics in 2003. The resulting Mahler's 6th Symphony recording has been nominated for a Grammy Award.
The orchestra achieved its most recent success by winning the Gramophone Award for its interpretation of Mahler's 2nd Symphony in London on 3 October 2007. (The Gramophone Award from the most prestigious classical music publication in the world ranks as an Academy Award in the classical music record industry. Winners are selected from among the thousands of classical music records released in the previous year.)
Musical director Iván Fischer (born in Budapest in 1951)
Initially a piano and violin student, Fischer later took up the cello and musical composition in Budapest. After graduating in renowned Vienna conductor Hans Swarowski's class, Fischer spent two years working as an assistant to Nikolaus Harnoncourt.
Winning the 1976 conducting competition organised by the Rupert Foundation in London launched Fischer's international career. Fischer took turns conducting the BBC symphonic orchestras, the London Symphonic Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.
Fischer founded the Budapest Festival Orchestra after his return to Hungary in 1983.
As a guest conductor, Fischer regularly works for the Berlin Philharmonics, the Concertgebouw Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, the Munich Philharmonics, and the Israeli Philharmonics.
Fischer is a Kossuth Award laureate, an ambassador of Hungarian culture, and the recipient of numerous international awards.
Next year, Fischer is to have performances with the Vienna Philharmonics, the Los Angeles Philharmonics, and Amsterdam's Concertgebouw Orchestra. In addition, he is to continue his Washington concert series as first guest conductor of the National Symphonic Orchestra.
