Concerto Budapest and Keller Quartet Summer Successes

Concerto Budapest gave two outstanding concerts at the Sisteron Festival in Southern France on 8 August 2014. Following Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, Brahms' Violin Concerto in D major, and Symphony No. 8 by Dvořak, the orchestra featuring soloist Pavel Sporcl presented the audience three bonus pieces as well. From here, the conductor András Keller and the other members of the Keller Quartet travelled to Canada to perform in the opening concert of the International String Quartet Festival in Montreal. Their programme included works by Mozart, Ligeti and Schubert, which they performed to a rapturous standing ovation. After giving a one-week master course within the framework of the festival, the ensemble went on to Buenos Aires to play in the legendary Teatro Colón, one of the largest and most impressive opera houses of the world acknowledged for its magnificent acoustics. The Keller Quartet's full-house concert on 19 August 2014, which included a unique combination of Bach's ultimate masterpiece The Art of Fugue and works by György Kurtág was a resounding success.

András Keller and his fellow musicians will open the Fall 2014 season at the Liszt Academy with an equally special concert on 27 and 28 September, which will feature Akiko Suwanai, the youngest violinist to win the International Tchaikovsky Competition in the history of the contest. Besides Mendelssohn's immortal Violin Concerto in E minor, their programme includes Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5, the Russian composer's perhaps most ‘Beethoven-like' work with its trajectory from E minor somberness to a blazing E major triumph, along with the moving Funeral Music by Witold Lutoslawski, composed on the death of Béla Bartók and performed two days after the anniversary of Bartók's passing away.