The BFO's year 2022 ended with two more awards: the Album of the Year 2022 award and the Audience Award were both won by the Hungarian orchestra in the Dutch NativeDSD poll. Their recording of Bruckner's Symphony No. 9 left everyone behind.

Only Mahler can say goodbye like that

An irregular heartbeat - so begins Mahler's grandiose Symphony No. 9, which the composer never heard performed. According to Iván Fischer, the whole symphony is a heartbreaking, infinitely personal farewell to life.

The composer's use of orchestral colors is incredibly mature and masterly, building a highly complex, stunningly forward-looking visionary symphony. The strange heartbeat sometimes brutally interrupts the flow of the music, only to lead us to the most beautiful and tragic ending Mahler ever composed.

For a true musical immersion, the Budapest Festival Orchestra invites you to Müpa Budapest on 19-21 January, where Iván Fischer will lead the work.

Run a marathon with Prokofiev!

At the closing concert of every marathon, Iván Fischer asks who has listened to all the concerts of the day, and there are always a few heroic music consumers.

The opportunity is back on 4 February, at the Prokofiev Marathon: there will be a symphonic fairy tale with the Budapest Strings, the MÁV Symphony Orchestra will play Prokofiev’s most popular Fifth Symphony, and the Győr Symphony Orchestra will perform excerpts from the composer’s monumental ballet score, the suite version of Romeo and Juliet, the Budafok Dohnányi Orchestra will perform, among others, Lieutenant Kijé, the Pannon Philharmonic Orchestra will make music with pianist József Balog, and the Budapest Festival Orchestra will perform the Cinderella Suite.

As always, chamber concerts and free activities will complete this magical day, the joint musical marathon of Müpa Budapest and the BFO.

Click here for further details.

All French

The Budapest Festival Orchestra is preparing a French-infused show in February at Müpa Budapest: On the 10th, 11th and 12th, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet will be the soloist, invited by Louis Langrée, Music Director of the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

The concert reveals both Ravel's enchanted-childish and his somber-dramatic sides. The tales of Mother Goose will lure you in, while the jazzy, troubled rhythms of his piano concerto for left hand will transport you to a different world. After the interval, Saint-Saëns' last symphony will be played, on which the composer commented “I gave you all I had to give.”

At the beginning of the year, the Budapest Festival Orchestra will also have a number of sold-out events: baroque concerts at the Liszt Academy, Cocoa Concerts in the ensemble's rehearsal hall, a Midnight Music concert in the Várkert Bazaar and a real curiosity: Tuba player József Bazsinka has been a member of the orchestra for 30 years and has turned 60, and a concert will be dedicated to this double celebration in January.

Click here to virtually visit Budapest Festival Orchestra