Zoltán Kocsis and the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra A Zeneakadémia saját szervezésű programja

Music life in the capital began to revive just a few days after the final shots were fired in Budapest. In March 1945, a performance was staged in the Opera House and a concert arranged in the Liszt Academy. It is necessary to add, however, that people’s tribunals were organized even sooner in the academy, which had miraculously survived the bombing largely intact. The first concert after the end of war saw János Ferencsik conducting the Royal Municipal Orchestra, predecessor of today’s National Philharmonic. Today it is impossible to say with certainty whether the concert programme came about as a result of the circumstances and opportunities, or after careful deliberation. In any case, the recital included a work by a Russian-born composer, one piece each from Hungarian and German Jewish artists, and to start proceedings the Beethoven work that great German thinker E. T. A. Hoffmann called the apotheosis of heroes sacrificing their lives for freedom. A good decade later, the Egmont music written to the Goethe drama became a symbol for the desire of Hungarians for freedom. János Ferencsik conducted a Bartók work at every one of his concerts in the days after the liberation of the capital. It may well have been a sort of message to the Hungarian composer living in America, calling him home. From a conductor who, in 1940, was forced to bid farewell to the genius at the last concert in Hungary of Bartók and Ditta Pásztory. During the second evening of the Legendary Concerts series in the Liszt Academy the Hungarian National Philharmonic under the baton of Zoltán Kocsis evoke this historical moment. The solo in Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto is played by international talent Júlia Pusker.