Balázs Fülei and the MR Symphony Orchestra A Zeneakadémia saját szervezésű programja

The concert audience has to take a long journey from Brahms’s tragic concert overture to the brilliant transfiguration – arriving in C major – of Richard Strauss. The path leads through Bartók’s second piano concerto, written in 1930, in which the listener can sense a folk tradition and Stravinsky’s neoclassical tongue alongside the inimitable Bartók intonation: as he put it, the “sinew and bone” style of piano playing. The world premiere of the string orchestra work by József Sári relates one of the most ancient stories of transfiguration in European cultural history, that of Jacob, who has harboured the sins of decades in his heart, crying out for forgiveness in the deep of night, having to undergo a fantastic battle, and with the dawn of a new day being a transformed person. “From now on you should not be called Jacob – that is, trickster, deceitful – but Israel, because you proved strong in the sight of the Lord and you will triumph over people.” The concert concludes with the Richard Strauss composition on the mystery of death, Death and Transfiguration. The Hungarian Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Gergely Vajda (first conductor of the ensemble between 2011 and 2014), with the principal part of the Bartók piece played by Balázs Fülei, chamber music professor at the Liszt Academy (just one week before his solo recital in the Grand Hall).