II. Ilona Fehér International Violin Competition July 4-14, 2024.
Festival Academy Budapest – Summerfest July 14-21, 2024. (day zero: July 13)
Founding artistic directors:
Katalin Kokas Ferenc Liszt Prize-winning violinist, Merited Artist, docent of the Academy of Music
Barnabas Clement Kossuth and Ferenc Liszt prize-winning violinist, teacher at the Academy of Music, university professor
Dear Audience!
This year, artists from 30 countries are coming to the summer festival of the Festival Academy Budapest, founded by the violinist couple Katalin Kokas and Kelemen Barnabás. In this year’s series, the nine-day festival program is replaced by the ten-day II. It will be preceded by the Ilona Fehér International Violin Competition and master classes. Professional buzz and transfer of knowledge: 45 world-famous soloists from 30 countries, 100 students from 25 universities, 45 competitors who will become big stars of the future, as well as 150 of our country’s best young music school students and music pedagogues coming for further training will interact with each other. The complex series of programs offers a world-class program in the capital, which makes it worth staying in Budapest even in the heat of July.
The Festival Academy Budapest (FAB) was launched nine years ago by Katalin Kokas and Barnabás Kelemen with the aim of creating a series of international events – festivals and master classes – in the Hungarian capital, a real live workshop. Within the framework of the FAB, the world’s most important classical music stars move to Budapest every year in the summer and perform at concerts in the capital’s most beautiful locations in one-off and unique formations, also undertaking to deal with the students participating in the courses. FAB’s extraordinary professional quality is shown by the fact that it is among the most important music events in the world (Luzern, Verbier, Salzburg) and noted by the international profession.
“The IX. FAB Summerfest and the Ilona V. Fehér International Violin Competition are the essence of our year-round mission, (…) an exotic vacation on the island of quality culture: complete spiritual recharge. A storehouse of visions, reflections, round table discussions, where our audience already feels at home, and old and new friendships deepen year after year.” – say the founding artistic directors
Featured guest of this year’s series Alexander Baricco world-famous Italian writer, but we can also meet other legends: Péter Eötvös is remembered FAB artists at the BMC Budapest Music Center. The greatest living master, György Kurtág holds a public master class at the BMC, arrives at Cluj company with the brilliant performance on the lives of Bartók and Kodály, with the Young Barbarians. THE holocaust anniversary on the occasion of world-famous artists, so Shlomo Mintz, Thomas Dunford and Dora Schwarzberg with his participation, they commemorate the victims with a concert at the Synagogue in Dohány Street. The works of Bach, Vivaldi and Mozart are performed in four more churches in Budapest on a walking concert day. The programs this year are Reflections was organized around his idea, which with its meanings of “reflection” and “realization” transforms seemingly diverse events into one, all-pervading experience.
“The world-renowned artists who come to the festival are actors of the festival not only as performers, but also as professors of the master classes. We ask all artists to take a master class in order to pass on their knowledge to the next generations. This is a special opportunity for the students – it’s no coincidence that every year more than one hundred and fifty people come from abroad just for the FAB summer master classes – since many well-known artists do not teach anywhere else.”(Katalin Kokas, founding artistic director of FAB)
“The festival is a ten-day dazzling series of events in the noblest sense of the word, interplay of world stars, joyous music, masterpieces performed by the best soloists. Chamber music flourishes in the intimate atmosphere of a sophisticated audience, that’s what the festival is about. But afterwards the mood settles down, the shared dinners with the inevitable gypsy music, which makes it all unrepeatable and inimitable, wherever we are in the world. FAB participants – be they artist-teachers or students – bring the good news of our country to all parts of the world and many return to our call year after year. The Festival Academy Budapest is also the cultural ambassador of our country thanks to the world’s most famous soloists.” (Barnabás Kelemen, founding artistic director of FAB)
This year, the festival program begins with the joint production of the Cluj-Napoca State Hungarian Theater and the Gyula Castle Theatre, with the performance entitled Young Barbarians, which has received numerous accolades. The performance will be played on the zeroth day of the festival, July 13, as well as on the opening night, July 14, at the House of Hungarian Music. Inspired by the lives of Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, the play was directed by Attila Vidnyánszky Jr. based on the text by H. Miklós Vecsei and the company’s improvisations. The production explores the friendship of the two world-famous Hungarian musicologists, Bartók and Kodály, and the motivations and experiences of their first journeys to collect folk songs, while confronting the viewer with the current questions of our sense of Hungarianness and national identity.
On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Hungarian Holocaust, the victims are remembered at the Festival Academy Budapest concert on July 15 in the Dohany Street Synagogue with the participation of artists such as Dora Schwarzberg, Shlomo Mintz, Jens Peter Maintz, Thomas Dunford, Kelemen Barnabás, Katalin Kokas, Alissa Margulis, Latica Honda-Rosenberg, Nora Schwarzberg, Maxim Rysanov, Kyril Zlotnikov. László Fekete, head cantor of the Dohany Street Synagogue, will take part in the concert. At the commemorative concert, such works as Bloch/Bosso’s Aprés Nigun, Mendelssohn’s Octet, Bloch: Baal Shem and Bruch’s wonderful Kol Nidrei will be performed. his work. An orchestra made up of students from the FAB master course will take part, as well as a performance by the Söndörgő band.
On several days of the festival, matinee concerts await those interested, admission to which is free. On these occasions, the students of the FAB master course take the stage to present their skills to those interested, testing themselves on the stage of one of the most beautiful music institutions in the world, the Academy of Music. FAB offers music, bubbly, and programs from morning to night. While you can simply “drop in” to the matinee concerts, lectures or master classes during the day as a passive student, it’s worth buying tickets in advance for the big evening concerts.
On the evening of July 16, the artists of the Festival Academy will select magical pieces from the solo repertoire. Works by Kreisler, Sarasate, Ravel, Wieniawsky, Paganini will be performed in the Millennium House.
In the program series of the Festival Academy Budapest, we always find special or unusual locations, with which we can get closer not only to the musical, but also to the local built heritage. At the “walking concerts” on July 17, the public can take a baroque walk through the churches of Budapest, listening to four different concerts in four churches. In the Evangelical Church of Fasori, students of the FAB master course will perform a selection of Bach’s works, in the Church of Saint Teresa of Avila in Terezváros, Bach’s 3rd and 6th Brandenburg Concertos, Mozart’s C minor Adagio and Fugue will be played with the participation of the students of the FAB master course led by Maxim Rysanov. In Mária utca’s Jésus Síve Jesuit Temple, there is a rarely performed piece, Strauss’s Metamorphoses. the participants can listen to his piece performed by Katalin Kokas, Maxim Rysanov, Razvan Popovici, László Fenyő, Dóra Kokas and Zsolt Fejérvári. In the Bakáts tér church, Vivaldi’s Lute Concerto will be performed by Thomas Dunford and the string ensemble formed by the students of the FAB master course.
The music of the 20th and 21st centuries will come to the fore at FAB’s July 18 program at the BMC-Budapest Music Center, which the organizers and the participating artists dedicate to the memory of Péter Eötvös. On the morning of Péter Eötvös Memorial Day, György Kurtág will hold a 3-hour public master class on Bartók’s String Quartets No. 2 in the Great Hall of the BMC. On stage, the maestro works with the Kelemen Quartet in Hungarian, with English interpretation. The course and teachings of the legendary composer can be heard not only by professionals, but also by anyone interested in this special event, with a behind-the-scenes look at how artists work to understand and sound a work with one of the greatest masters alive today.
At the Péter Eötvös Memorial Day concert in the Great Hall of the BMC, emblematic works of contemporary music will be performed – including several works by Péter Eötvös – which define the music of our time and show the way for future generations of composers. Contributors: Orsolya Korcsolán, the Kelemen Quartett, Barnabás Kelemen, Jonian Ilias Kadesha, Katalin Kokas, Vashti Mimosa Hunter, Miklós Lukács, Alexander Lonquich, Latica Honda Rosenberg, Diana Ketler, Alissa Margulis, Matthew Hunt, Gábor Csalog, Joó Szabolcs.
On July 19, in the Solti Hall of the Academy of Music, one of Beethoven’s most popular and most successful chamber pieces for winds and strings, the Septet in E flat major, will be performed by FAB artists – with the participation of Kelemen Barnabás, Katalin Kokas, Zsolt Fejérvári, Matthew Hunt, Tamás Benkócs, Jose Vicente Castle. In the second part of the concert, Tatiana Samoul, Jose Vicente Castello and Maria Meerovich will play Brahms’ Kürt trio, which the author wrote in 1865 for the death of his mother.
On July 20, in the morning devoted to the relationship between literature and music, we can listen to a conversation with Alessandro Barrico, and in the evening, in connection with the award ceremony of the international drawing competition announced by the festival, Vivaldi’s work: The Four Seasons will be read, not in the usual way, but in addition to the music by the author together with the score texts – the winning drawings are connected to this, which the public can get to know when projected in the Great Hall of the Academy of Music. On the same day, well-known and popular pieces of music such as Schubert’s piano quintet in A major “The Trout” or Winterreise will also be played. The Italian writer Alessandro Baricco will be the festival’s guest of honor this evening, and actors will read excerpts from his works. Among others, Kristóf Baráti, Katalin Kokas, Barnabás Kelemen, Johannes Held, Gábor Csalog, Razvan Popovici, László Fenyő, Zsolt Fejérvári and Gloria Campaner will take part in the concert.
On the closing day of the festival, the award winners of the Fehér Ilona International Violin Competition will perform, as well as Andreas Ottensamer and the band formed by the students of the FAB master class. At the early evening concert that closes the program series, we say goodbye to the artists and this year’s FAB Summerfest with works such as Bach’s four-piano concerto, which the audience can hear performed by Alexander Lonquich, Maria Meerovich, Diana Ketler and Gábor Csalog, as well as Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet in B minor, in which Matthew Hunt , Boris Brovtsyn, Katalin Kokas, Maxim Rysanov and Dóra Kokas are on stage. In the second half of the concert, after a long international joint tour, which affected, among other things, the Santa Cecilia Academy in Rome and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Barnabás Kelemen, Nicolas Altstead and Alexander Lonquich will this time perform Brahms’ piano trio in B major in Budapest, in the Great Hall of the Academy of Music. .
More information about the concerts of the festival Akadémia Budapest and purchasing tickets: and the festival-2024/ on websites.
Text and images: Festival Academy Budapest
Interview with Barnabas Kelemen and Katalin Kokas in the June issue of Patika Magazine: ,,We also involve our children in our musical life.”
Source: www.patikamagazin.hu
