Playing music and the market

Judit Körmendy-Ékes, the head of the orchestra’s board, told an online press conference that the orchestra will use state funding to lay the groundwork to become a market player.

“It’s not enough for an orchestra to simply provide a high artistic standard,” Körmendy-Ékes said. “It must also operate as a professional market player.”

Concert cellist István Várdai, who is the orchestra’s artistic director, said the group is planning to perform transcripts, new pieces by contemporary composers and to cooperate with other artistic disciplines to “have the music reach as many people as possible”.

The orchestra will perform concerts on three continents over the coming three years, Várdai said.

A performance by the Budafok Dohnanyi Orchestra will be broadcast live from Müpa, the Palace of Arts, on February 27 at 7.30pm.

Conductor Guido Mancusi will lead the players through Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain”, Stravinsky’s “The Firebird – suite” (1919) and Dvořák’s “Symphony No. 9 in E minor, ‘From the New World’, Op. 95”. There will be no audience, and the evening will be transmitted on the Müpa website and YouTube channel.

Müpa advises about the concert: “The word ‘romantic’ means ‘novelistic’, and it is no coincidence that Romantic music is often narrative or depictive in character, sometimes in a more concrete sense, and sometimes more abstractly.

“This concert will present two Romantic works, along with a third one positioned on the boundary between Romanticism and Modernism, although with many Romantic features – along with a strong power to narrate and depict.

“Mussorgsky, Stravinsky and Dvořák constitute the offering at this concert, which will be conducted by the ensemble’s first conductor, Guido Mancusi.”