Kocsis season ticket 2

SÁNDOR VERESS: Threnos – in memoriam Béla Bartók
LISZT: Piano Concerto No. 1
LISZT: Faust Symphony

Louis Schwizgebel – piano
Hungarian National Philharmonic
Conductor: Zsolt Hamar

Hungarian Evening

Sándor Veress (1907-1992), is one of the most important members of the generation of Hungarian composers who came after Bartók. Just like Bartók, Veress was an experimental and inventive composer who had to leave his homeland. Veress was also also born in Transylvannia and wrote his 1945 Threnos in tribute to the great composer, shortly after Bartók's death. Veress would be delighted to know that for this concert, a young pianist will travel to Hungary from Veress's adopted homeland of Switzerland to perform Franz Liszt's piano concerto.  As most schoolchildren know (at least in Hungary), Liszt began his musical career as a pianist, and it was in this guise that he made his name throughout Europe, before becoming a composer. Liszt's piano concertos are the finest examples of the confluence of the two sides of his talent, as he both wrote and performed these works. Liszt strived to show everything in his music: the worlds of nature, poetry, history, faith and philosophy. His ambition to express everything through music led him to Faust and the creation of one of his most important and influential pieces of music, the Faust Symphony.