From Hal Square to Liszt Ferenc Square (1875–1907) A Zeneakadémia saját szervezésű programja

The Liszt Academy – a legend. 140 years ago, in 1875, titans descended from near Olympus to light the flame. Today, this is as though it all happened 1400 years ago, so filled with events has the history of the Liszt Academy been since this heroic act of Liszt and Erkel. These squares have a history, even a message, from Liszt’s apartment on Hal Square to the recently opened György Ligeti building. Two popular professors of music history, András Batta and Sándor Kovács (one-time fellow students in the Liszt Academy’s department of musicology) take us on a four-part tour through this amazing history. For the first talk they cover the foundation and subsequent decades, expounding on how and why the idea of the formation of an institution of higher music education even arose in the years after the Compromise, how Ferenc Liszt became increasingly enthused with the scheme, and with what energy founder Ferenc Erkel took on the institution in its earliest days. Finally, they examine how legendary director Ödön Mihalovich transformed the school into a centre of European renown. Sándor Kovács and András Batta quote from the past of the Liszt Academy, illustrating their talk with live music and archive recordings, calling on the assistance of the professors and students of the academy, and where necessary diving into documents and anecdotes, and all this transmitted with a historian’s sobriety, nostalgia and humour.