Sándor Balassa composer’s recital A Zeneakadémia saját szervezésű programja

This concert, which hails Sándor Balassa on the occasion of his 80th birthday, showcases the second half – dating from the early 1990s to the present day – of the extremely rich and varied oeuvre of the composer: the recently completed String Quartet No. 4 is a world premiere. Balassa entered this composition into the works catalogue as opus 135 not at all bothered by the shadow cast by Beethoven’s similarly numbered opus, the last he completed, a string quartet (in F major) raising the drama of human existence into the sublime. Of the composer’s exquisite chamber compositions from the past few years, which are deeply imbued with playfulness, wrote one critic: “There is something essential without the strident rhetoric of coming to the essence. Essential, pure musically expressed works.” It is rare to find on the programme of a concert hall, and quite exceptional in a concert compiled from works by a contemporary composer, the genre of harp concerto. “I was always attracted to the sound of the harp,” the composer confessed. “It is a special phenomenon in modern-day music. Composers discovered in Romanticism and works born in the early 20th century a natural way of playing the harp which allows artists to perform with virtuosity, in a refined way and still – given the characteristics of the instrument – sublimely. I hoped that one day I, too, would find my own harp sound.”