Mirror Hall evenings 4

For the opening concert of the 2025/2026 season, the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra and its Kossuth Prize-winning chief music director György Vashegyi invite the audience first and foremost on a pleasant retrospective by performing Le Roi d’Ys overture from Lalo’s opera, which will cast our minds back to the recent successful premiere of the work in Hungary.

What could be a more beautiful sounding gift one week before Christmas than a three-part oratorio that is unknown in Hungary and recalls a less well documented part of Jesus’s life, the Redeemer’s childhood?

A French evening in the spirit of refinement, colours, moods – and pathos. The Debussy work, L’Après-midi d’un Faune, heralds the birth of impressionism and the two Saint-Saëns compositions, the Cello Concerto in A minor and the hugely popular Organ Symphony, represent romanticism – the latter of which is heavily influenced by Liszt. It is not just the composers who are French: so are the conductor and the soloist.