Budapest Festival Orchestra A Zeneakadémia saját szervezésű programja

Hungarian audiences are familiar with Mikhail Pletnev: he has appeared several times in Budapest as conductor of the Russian National Orchestra, an ensemble he established in 1990. However, so far he has only ever been in Hungary once as a pianist, for a Chopin recital at the Liszt Academy in 2006, the same year in which he retired as a pianist. After legendary concert tours and recordings by the artist who triumphed at the Tchaikovsky competition in 1979, he decided that he would continue his career ‘merely’ as a conductor (and composer), although at the end of last year he returned to his first love, the piano. So, after a seven-year break the charismatic Russian returns to the Liszt Academy in order to play (in the Grand Hall, the ‘Mecca of pianists’) one of the most charming piano concertos by Mozart in the company of Gábor Takács-Nagy and the Budapest Festival Orchestra. The first guest conductor of the Festival Orchestra won world fame as a violinist and representative of the Hungarian chamber music tradition, although these days he makes the most of his exceptional musical virtues as a conductor. The highly promising partnership between Pletnev and Takács-Nagy focuses on the magical work written by a 20-year-old Mozart for Countess Lützow. During these four recitals this work is joined by Mazeppa, Liszt’s symphonic poem structured on the narrative of Victor Hugo, and the masterpiece of 21-year-old Mendelssohn, the Reformation Symphony.