Liszt Fest

Events 2021

2021 2022

08. 10. 2021.

Art Market Budapest

The Art Market Budapest, the most important international contemporary art fair in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Hungary’s largest art exhibition, will open its doors for the eleventh time in October 2021. Visited by tens of thousands...

More info

Karol Mossakowski
Photographer: Marie Rolland

Peter Berger
Photographer: Marek Olbrzymek

Slávka Zámečníková
Photographer: Alfheidur Erla

08. 10. 2021.

The Opening Concert of the Liszt Fest

Written in 1862, Évocation à la Chapelle Sixtine literally originated in a vision. When Liszt visited the Sistine Chapel in Rome, musical legends related to the place were evoked in his imagination. Allegri and Mozart appeared before his...

More info

David Yengibarian
Photographer: Márton Perlaki

09. 10. 2021.

PONT Festival

Find the wonders of the world in Budapest again! PONT Festival, which brings you cultural and musical rarities from around the world, returns in a new form. This year, we present the exciting world of the Caucasus, which will stimulate all your...

More info

09. 10. 2021.

Art Market Budapest

More info

09. 10. 2021.

Cinemira TEEN

Cinemira TEEN is the only film festival in Hungary that is dedicated to teenagers. This one-of-its-kind event allows young people to get to know different cultures around the world through films, gain insights into the secrets of cinematography,...

More info

09. 10. 2021.

Levente Gyöngyösi: The Master and Margarita

Satan turns up in Moscow, with an entourage of a speaking cat and other strange creatures. People start disappearing mysteriously, witches fly through the air, and suddenly we are in biblical times. The surrealistic story of Bulgakov’s novel,...

More info

09. 10. 2021.

Cracow Singers

The Cracow Singers is a chamber choir composed of experienced professional singers, which immediately caused a stir in the world of performing art with novel projects that are centred around the relationship between the different forms of art and...

More info

09. 10. 2021.

Mónika Kecskés and László Deák’s Organ Recital

When Liszt accepted the invitation of Charles Alexander, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, and took the position of conductor in Weimar, a city with a once brilliant cultural life, he knew full well he was also to fill the shoes of Johann...

More info

10. 10. 2021.

Cinemira TEEN

More info

10. 10. 2021.

Art Market Budapest

More info

Illustration by Bonaventura Genelli for Dante's Divina Commedia (detail)

10. 10. 2021.

“I’m deeper and deeper in Dante’s dark forest…”

Ferenc Liszt was interested in the poetry of Dante, especially the Divine Comedy, throughout his life. Nor was this interest very idiosyncratic: 19th-century artists revered the medieval poet. Whence this age’s fascination with Dante? What...

More info

10. 10. 2021.

Love and Hell

Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, and the famous sonnets of his contemporary, Francesco Petrarca, are well known to have had a great influence on Ferenc Liszt’s work. At the concert of Péter Kiss, the two poets’ texts can be heard...

More info

10. 10. 2021.

Martin Sturm’s Organ Recital

Organ works form an important part of Ferenc Liszt’s oeuvre. It is interesting, however, that he wrote most of the organ pieces and transcriptions in the last two decades of his life, and would return to them almost till the end. In addition...

More info

Balázs Szabó
Photographer: Valerie Oberreiter

11. 10. 2021.

Balázs Szabó’s Organ Recital

Ferenc Liszt took an interest in the organ at the zenith of his career. He had of course played the instrument before, but did not write an original composition for it until 1850. The fantasy and fugue of that year, which he based on a melody (Ad...

More info

12. 10. 2021.

The Hope of Tomorrow

Imre Gyöngyössy, the poet and film director, who was an Artist of Merit, a laureate of the Balázs Béla Prize and the Cinema della Pace lifetime achievement award, as well as a nominee for the Oscar, was born 90 years ago. On this occasion, the...

More info

Thomas Hampson
Photographer: Jimmy Donelan

Martin Haselböck
Photographer: Meinrad Hofer

Orchester Wiener Akademie
Photographer: Andrej Grilc

12. 10. 2021.

Thomas Hampson (voice) and the Orchester Wiener Akademie

The last piece the old Liszt worked on in the summer of 1886 was an orchestral arrangement of a song (Die Vätergruft) he wrote at a young age. Along with numerous seldom-heard compositions, it will now be on the programme of the concert of Thomas...

More info

12. 10. 2021.

Jazzical Trio

From Stravinsky and Ravel to Milhaud and Bartók, classical musicians have been known to maintain an interest in jazz, just as jazz musicians have displayed a fascination with classical music for decades, from Dave Brubeck and the Modern Jazz Quartet...

More info

13. 10. 2021.

The Hope of Tomorrow

More info

13. 10. 2021.

An Evening with Anita Harag

Published by Magvető, with Rather Cool for the Time of the Year ushered Anita Harag in as a seminal representative of the new wave in Hungarian literature, winning over readers and critics with an inventive language, easy-flowing storytelling and...

More info

13. 10. 2021.

Patti Smith

The legendary American poet, visual artist, singer and songwriter will celebrate her 75th birthday at the end of the year. Between 1975 and 2012, she released eleven studio albums, and her songs and poems have made a fundamental impact on...

More info

14. 10. 2021.

5th Hungarian Music Video Contest

Dozens of the video clips that are produced in Hungary every week do not gain the attention they deserve even with remarkable online viewing numbers. The fifth competition of Hungarian music videos both has a professional jury and allows the...

More info

14. 10. 2021.

Margó Literary Festival and Book Fair

Along with Hungarian authors and their new works, the tenth instalment of the Margó Literary Festival and Book Fair presents renowned international writers, like Deborah Feldman, the author of Unorthodox, which has been adapted for film with great...

More info

Georges Aperghis
Photographer: Kai Bienert

14. 10. 2021.

Spotlight on Georges Aperghis

The Serenade for 13 Wind Instruments, which Richard Strauss wrote at the age of seventeen, is one of the works the Péter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation’s mentoring programme for conductors and composers focuses on this year. The mentored...

More info

14. 10. 2021.

Electroacoustica 2020

This exciting concert presents six electroacoustic compositions, which were award-winners at Müpa’s composer competition. The works vividly illustrate the diversity of technological and aesthetic approaches that are open to what is a genre...

More info

15. 10. 2021.

Margó Literary Festival and Book Fair

More info

Edit Klukon and Dezső Ránki
Photographer: Andrea Felvégi

15. 10. 2021.

Edit Klukon and Dezső Ránki’s Concert Series • 4.1

Literature was perhaps the most important of the many sources of inspiration that Liszt drew on for his symphonic poems. The first in a series of concerts by Edit Klukon and Dezső Ránki presents some of Liszt’s individual and characteristic...

More info

15. 10. 2021.

Edit Klukon and Dezső Ránki’s Concert Series • 4.2

“We always felt close to Liszt’s music and personality, his works have been one of the cornerstones of our joint music-making, which we began almost four decades ago. We came to premiere the four-handed version of Via Crucis –...

More info

Concerto Budapest
Photographer: Gábor Fejér

Ferenc Snétberger
Photographer: Attila Kleb

15. 10. 2021.

Rhapsody

András Keller’s Concerto Budapest and its principal violinist, Gábor Homoky invite the audience into a special musical universe: joining forces with world-famous jazz musicians – violin virtuoso Roby Lakatos and guitarist Ferenc...

More info

16. 10. 2021.

Margó Literary Festival and Book Fair

More info

16. 10. 2021.

Fülöp Ránki’s Piano Recital

Ferenc Liszt’s 210th birthday coincides with two other notable anniversaries. Dante, one of Liszt’s most important sources of inspiration, died 700 years ago and the programme honours him with the Dante Sonata. Saint-Saëns, the ingenious...

More info

16. 10. 2021.

Edit Klukon and Dezső Ránki’s Concert Series • 4.3

Liszt’s symphonic poems were premiered in German cities, primarily in Weimar and on one occasion each in Braunschweig and Sondershausen. Héroïde funèbre was first performed in Breslau (Wrocław, Poland), while Hungaria was given its...

More info

16. 10. 2021.

Edit Klukon and Dezső Ránki’s Concert Series • 4.4

“Every year is Liszt year for me,” noted Dezső Ránki in 2011, the year of Ferenc Liszt’s 200th birthday, but went on to say he was pleased because “the heightened interest means we have more opportunities to play works that...

More info

Mihály Berecz
Photographer: Gábor Zsugonits

16. 10. 2021.

Barnabás Kelemen (violin) and Mihály Berecz (piano) in Concert

Liszt wrote few chamber compositions, and the traditional genres of chamber music are completely absent from his oeuvre. However, the surviving works – mostly adaptations – throw into relief an extremely vivacious imagination as regards...

More info

Balázs Szokolay Dongó
Photographer: Anita Veres

László Fassang
Photographer: Szilvia Csibi / Müpa Budapest

16. 10. 2021.

Liszt and Sacrality

Like other artists in the age of Romanticism who sought new sources of inspiration, Liszt showed a keen interest in the music of cultures other than his own, like medieval church music and Gypsy music. However, he was not exposed to traditional folk...

More info

17. 10. 2021.

Margó Literary Festival and Book Fair

More info

17. 10. 2021.

Compañía Antonio Gades: Carmen

Carmen, Carlos Saura’s legendary dance film met with a huge, unexpected success internationally. The stage version of the dance adaptation was premiered in Paris in 1983, and it was received as enthusiastically as the productions Blood Wedding...

More info

Ferenc Liszt (1860)
Photographer: Franz Hanfstaengl

18. 10. 2021.

The Relationship Between Liszt and his Hungarian Contemporaries in the Light of Hungary Cultural History

This large-scale, four-day conference of musicology and music history, which will end on Ferenc Liszt’s birthday on October 22, will provide an overview of new developments and new trends in Liszt research. On October 18–19, the lectures...

More info

18. 10. 2021.

Compañía Antonio Gades: Carmen

More info

Hungarian National Choir
Photographer: Szilvia Csibi / Müpa

18. 10. 2021.

Dante 700

700 years from his death in 1321, when exiled in Ravenna from his beloved Florence, Dante still speaks to us. He speaks to the men and women of today, asking to be read and studied, but also to be listened to and imitated in his journey towards...

More info

19. 10. 2021.

The Relationship Between Liszt and his Hungarian Contemporaries in the Light of Hungary Cultural History

More info

19. 10. 2021.

Дeva / Saya Noé / I Am Soyuz

Akvárium Klub presents Дeva (Deva – Dorina Takács), Saya Noé (Mimi Kőrös) and I Am Soyuz, the project of Sweden-based singer-songwriter Felícia Lili Bozóky. What the three young performers have in common is that they do each phase of...

More info

20. 10. 2021.

Hungarian Jazz 2020

The songs entered into the small jazz formation category of Müpa’s Composition Competition were written for the most diverse ensembles, as regards both the number of players and the instruments, and the award winners cover a broad spectrum...

More info

Ferenc Liszt, lithography (cca. 1869)
Photographer: Edgar Hanfstaengl

21. 10. 2021.

New Additions to the World of Liszt

More info

21. 10. 2021.

Budapest Showcase Hub

After last year’s hiatus, the Budapest Showcase Hub, or, BUSH, fills Budapest’s clubs again with the most exciting East European performers on 21–22 October. During the day, hear leading Hungarian and foreign experts of the music...

More info

Gergely Vajda
Photographer: János Posztós / Müpa

21. 10. 2021.

Péter Esterházy – Gergely Vajda: Fuharosok (Transporters) / George Benjamin: Into the Little Hill – premiere

“My work is an opera in the way Esterházy’s is a novel,” said Gergely Vajda about the piece he composed for a mezzo-soprano and a chamber ensemble, and based on Péter Esterházy’s short story, Fuharosok. Premiered at a concert...

More info

21. 10. 2021.

Cory Henry: Best of Me

World-famous New York musician Cory Henry keeps challenging those who want to pigeonhole his style, a music that is equally frenetic, irresistibly spontaneous and virtuosic. The multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter and producer, who appeared on...

More info

22. 10. 2021.

New Additions to the World of Liszt

More info

22. 10. 2021.

Budapest Showcase Hub

More info

Polina Pasztircsák
Photographer: Giancarlo Pradelli

22. 10. 2021.

Liszt: Esztergom Mass

“The church composer is also a preacher and a priest, and where the word is no longer sufficient to express the sentiment, music transfigures it and lifts it aloft,” said Ferenc Liszt. Composed with exceptional care, the music of the...

More info

22. 10. 2021.

Gilberto Gil

Almost 80, legendary Brazilian singer, guitarist and songwriter Gilberto Gil continues to tour tirelessly. In Europe, he is accompanied by his son, Bem Gil, his grandchildren, Flor and João, and the extraordinary singer, Adriana Calcanhotto....

More info

23. 10. 2021.

Cinemira KIDS

Cinemira is the only film festival in Hungary that is dedicated to children. This is an event for the whole family, where children can get to know different cultures around the world through films. At this two-day celebration of the genre, hundreds...

More info

Svábhegy Observatory
Photographer: János Posztós / Müpa

23. 10. 2021.

Nice and Slow – Liszt edition

If you take a look at the night sky with help from Hosszúlépés. Járunk? and the staff of the Konkoly-Thege Miklós Institute of Astronomy, Ferenc Liszt’s famous piano piece, Evil Star (Unstern! – Sinistre – Disastro) will not be the...

More info

Gábor Hollerung
Photographer: Szilvia Csibi / Müpa

Roland Szentpáli
Photographer: Zsófia Raffay

23. 10. 2021.

The Sounds of Freedom

Béla Bartók’s first creative period has strong ties to the world of the 19th century, especially the music of Ferenc Liszt. The symphonic poem centred around Lajos Kossuth connects to Liszt’s Hungarian Historical Portraits, or such...

More info

24. 10. 2021.

Cinemira KIDS

More info

24. 10. 2021.

Nice and Slow – Liszt edition

More info

Danube Art Ensemble: Beautiful Mezőség
Photographer: Tamás Végh

24. 10. 2021.

Danube Art Ensemble: Beautiful Mezőség – premiere

Inspired by the success of its production, Our Love, Kalotaszeg, the Danube Art Ensemble chooses again to focus on the folk art and dance tradition of a single region, this time the Mezőség (Câmpia Transilvaniei) in Transylvania. The Mezőség is...

More info

Events 2021

Past festivals

Art Market Budapest

The Opening Concert of the Liszt Fest

PONT Festival

Art Market Budapest

Cinemira TEEN

Levente Gyöngyösi: The Master and Margarita

Cracow Singers

Mónika Kecskés and László Deák’s Organ Recital

Cinemira TEEN

Art Market Budapest

“I’m deeper and deeper in Dante’s dark forest…”

Love and Hell

Martin Sturm’s Organ Recital

Balázs Szabó’s Organ Recital

The Hope of Tomorrow

Thomas Hampson (voice) and the Orchester Wiener Akademie

Jazzical Trio

The Hope of Tomorrow

An Evening with Anita Harag

Patti Smith

5th Hungarian Music Video Contest

Margó Literary Festival and Book Fair

Spotlight on Georges Aperghis

Electroacoustica 2020

Margó Literary Festival and Book Fair

Edit Klukon and Dezső Ránki’s Concert Series • 4.1

Edit Klukon and Dezső Ránki’s Concert Series • 4.2

Rhapsody

Margó Literary Festival and Book Fair

Fülöp Ránki’s Piano Recital

Edit Klukon and Dezső Ránki’s Concert Series • 4.3

Edit Klukon and Dezső Ránki’s Concert Series • 4.4

Barnabás Kelemen (violin) and Mihály Berecz (piano) in Concert

Liszt and Sacrality

Margó Literary Festival and Book Fair

Compañía Antonio Gades: Carmen

The Relationship Between Liszt and his Hungarian Contemporaries in the Light of Hungary Cultural History

Compañía Antonio Gades: Carmen

Dante 700

The Relationship Between Liszt and his Hungarian Contemporaries in the Light of Hungary Cultural History

Дeva / Saya Noé / I Am Soyuz

Hungarian Jazz 2020

New Additions to the World of Liszt

Budapest Showcase Hub

Péter Esterházy – Gergely Vajda: Fuharosok (Transporters) / George Benjamin: Into the Little Hill – premiere

Cory Henry: Best of Me

New Additions to the World of Liszt

Budapest Showcase Hub

Liszt: Esztergom Mass

Gilberto Gil

Cinemira KIDS

Nice and Slow – Liszt edition

The Sounds of Freedom

Cinemira KIDS

Nice and Slow – Liszt edition

Danube Art Ensemble: Beautiful Mezőség – premiere