Borodin‘s opera Prince Igor will open the final concert of the 2023-24 season of the Budafok Concert Nights Series. Borodin was a Russian composer, but he also had a distinguished scientific career as a chemist. He brought to his music the musical richness of the peoples of Central Asia, sometimes seeking a bold musical language while respecting and loving classical traditions. Prince Igor is an opera in four acts, with a libretto based on the 12th-century Russian epic entitled The Lay of Igor’s Host, in which Emperor Igor II’s military campaigns against the invading Polovtsian tribes are recounted. Borodin spent almost 21 years writing the opera, but his sudden death prevented him from completing it. His friends Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov edited and completed the opera, which was finally premièred in 1890 in Saint Petersburg. Tonight, the overture to the opera will be performed by Budafok Dohnányi Orchestra.
Levente Gyöngyösi‘s Piccolo Concerto was commissioned by Belgian piccoloist Peter Verhoyen, piccolo soloist of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, in the spring of 2022. The work was recorded and released by the artist together with 3 other piccolo concertos.
The concerto consists of 4 movements: after a short, improvisatory opening movement (Rubato) with Hungarian folk influences (tilinkó, Hungarian shepherd’s pipe – the tr.), the second movement (Allegro moderato), the main focus of the work, follows in a large-scale sonata form, the musical roots of which go back not only to Hungarian folk music but also to Béla Bartók and jazz. In the short third movement (Andantino), the romantic, dreamlike atmosphere created by the harp, solo violin and flute is interrupted from time to time by the increasingly desperate, speech-like gesticulations of the piccolo. Finally, the work, which is about twenty minutes long, ends with a very virtuosic final movement (Presto), which is full of explosive energy.
The second part of the evening will feature Smetana‘s much-loved and well-known The Moldau. The Moldau is a six-part work, one of the pieces in the cycle he named “My Fatherland”, each part of which is a symphonic poem with a programmatic title. Smetana composed the work between 1872 and 1879, inspired by his love of the Czech nation’s past and the beauty of the Czech landscapes, and dedicated it to the city of Prague. The Moldau is the most frequently heard section of the entire composition, depicting the journey of the River Vltava (Moldau in English – the tr.) from its source to the Czech capital, while we witness various events taking place on the banks of the river: a hunt in the forest, a country wedding, and the dance of fairies in the moonlight.
The final work of the concert is a piece written for a pantomime play by the namesake composer of the orchestra, Ernő Dohnányi. The Veil of Pierette is based on Arthur Schnitzler’s play of the same title, which tells the dramatic story of a love triangle that unfolds from a wedding night with a bride running away to her lover, the emptying of a poisoned chalice, the ghost of a dead lover, and finally the bride driven mad by what has happened and what she has lost. The work was premièred in Dresden in 1910, and in the same year at the Budapest Opera. It is with a version of the Suite from The Veil of Pierette that Dohnányi Orchestra Budafok, conducted by Levente Török, will bid farewell to the audience at the end of the season.
