The program of the 8th Russian Music Festival, running from March 12 to 26 in Debrecen and Budapest, ranges from monumental concertos to songs and four-hand piano works.
This year, in addition to concerts, the event will also introduce audiences to Russian composers through the theme “Portraits”, exploring teacher-student relationships among composers and their creative inspirations. The founder and artistic director of the festival is pianist Marcell Szabó.
As they wrote, the festival builds a bridge between past and present, masters and their students—each work serving as a brushstroke in portraying the character of great composers.
The program series paints portraits of four influential creators. It features Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who helped shape the cradle of Russian music; his intellectual successor and outstanding pedagogue Anton Arensky; the piano giant Sergei Rachmaninoff, who was a student of Arensky; and Dmitry Kabalevsky, who also had a strong teaching vocation.
“Portraying a world-famous figure like Rachmaninoff requires a completely different approach than sketching the portrait of his lesser-known teacher Arensky. I would like to show something new, but also highlight familiar features,” the statement quoted Marcell Szabó as saying.
The musical arc will be shaped by outstanding soloists such as Ágnes Langer and Anna Székely (violin), Ádám Balogh, Tamás Pregun, Marcell Szabó, and Attila Szaniszló (piano), as well as Máté Fülep (baritone) and Áron Rátkai (cello).
The festival will also include a visual component: thanks to the Russian National Museum of Music, audiences will be able to see a unique exhibition.
The exhibition presents original costume and stage designs created for Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera and ballet works, bringing the splendor of these stage productions to life. In addition, accompanying programs will include ballet and opera film screenings, further enriching the portrait of the composers.
The program—ranging from monumental concertos to songs and four-hand piano pieces—will take place at four cultural venues in two cities: in Budapest at the Liszt Academy of Music and the Russian Cultural Center, and in Debrecen at the Kölcsey Center and the Liszt Hall of the University of Debrecen.
More information about the 8th Russian Music Festival is available at: https://ozf.hu/.
(MTI)
