Hungarian National Philharmonic A Zeneakadémia saját szervezésű programja

Haydn biographer H. C. Robbins Landon considered the D minor mass (1798) to be arguably the greatest work in the oeuvre of the composer. The composition written at the time of the Napoleonic Wars was termed in Haydn’s own catalogue ‘Mass for Troubled Times’. However, when composing the work he had no idea, although the audience listening to the first performance were very well aware, that in August of that year Admiral Nelson had achieved a strategically important victory over Napoleon at the Battle of the Nile. Not long after its genesis, therefore, the mass written at the commission of Prince Esterházy was called the ‘Nelson Mass’, particularly following the visit by Nelson to the Esterházy family in 1800. Before the Haydn mass, the Hungarian National Philharmonic perform one of the finest classical symphonic works, Mozart’s D major symphony first performed in Prague, the city of his greatest successes, and a rarely played Haydn concerto for violin (in C major), the latter with solo by Kristóf Baráti who was recently awarded a Kossuth Prize.