On The Spot – Folk Music Department A Zeneakadémia saját szervezésű programja

The extraordinarily popular Folk Music Department of the Liszt Academy may be relatively new yet it carries on a tradition that is well over a century old. The noble tradition of the study and presentation of Hungarian folk song culture was initiated by Bartók and Kodály, while it remains absolutely in the present-day thanks to the huge success of the dance house movement and its recent renaissance. Not to speak of the elemental power of the genre fertilizing contemporary Hungarian culture in a thousand different ways, while at the same time it is present and flourishes not simply as an influence on others but as a genre of equal value in its own right. This makes it possible to give a straightforward and emphatic answer to the constantly recurring, now verging on pedantic question that is raised in academic music circles, i.e. can folk music be performed authentically on a stage, uprooted from its home earth, by artists mostly socialized within an urban environment.