Thursday, 31 October 2019, 7.30 pm
Müpa Budapest – Béla Bartók National Concert Hall
Kobayashi Season Ticket/1.
Péter Eötvös and the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra
Origin
PÉTER EÖTVÖS: zeroPoints
PÉTER EÖTVÖS: Speaking Drums
***
PÉTER EÖTVÖS: Per Luciano Berio
LISZT: Dante Symphony, S. 109
Martin Grubinger – percussion instruments
Hungarian National Female Choir (choir master: Csaba Somos)
Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra
Conductor: Péter Eötvös
Are you curious to hear how a "no waiting" sign sounds when struck by a professional
musician? What is it like to have a roaring lion on the stage? There is no reason to be
frightened of the latter, as it will not leap out into the auditorium. Instead, it is a unique
instrument that will be one of many making their sounds in Eötvös's piece Speaking Drums.
To be played between two of the Hungarian composer shorter works in the first half, it
actually involves a percussion soloist teaching his instruments how to speak, mutter and
shriek poems, before playing the rhythm to the words on his instrument, and this is what
provides the melody for the orchestra. There will no translation of the poems, as the verses by
Sándor Weöres are so-called nonsense poems, words without meaning, with a little bit of
Sanskrit text also added in at the end. Not enough? After the interval, the audience will also
get a glimpse of hell – as imagined by Liszt based on his reading of Dante. The massive
Dante Symphony is Liszt's setting of purgatory into musical notes. Wagner talked him out of
depicting heaven, afraid that it would prove banal. This is why Liszt instead wrote a
Magnificat as the closing, naturally with the participation of the chorus.