Name: Back to Nature – Chamber Music on Period Instruments
Start: 2026-12-06T17:00:00
Location: BFO Rehearsal Hall

György Kertész

Ágnes Polónyi

Csaba Sipos

Emese Gulyás

Gyöngyvér Oláh

Nikoletta Reinhardt

Dóra Pétery

László Herboly

Vera Balogh

Igor Davidovics

Budapest Fes­ti­val Orches­tra

A true legend will take the stage with the Budapest Festival Orchestra. The grande dame of the piano, the “priestess of art,” Elisabeth Leonskaja, who won the Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Classical Music Awards (ICMA) in 2020, has received the highest distinctions in both Austria and Georgia, and was the winner of a competition at the age of 19 before a jury led by Arthur Rubinstein. She later performed in duo with Sviatoslav Richter while conquering the world’s most prestigious concert halls. This time, she will perform one of Mozart’s most popular and grandiose piano concertos, and the only one concluding in a minor key. This piece will be framed in a special manner. The concert will open with the orchestral version of Prokofiev’s chamber overture written for original Hebrew themes and conclude with a Schumann symphony inspired by pleasant experiences and calling to mind a peaceful riverside excursion.

Tour: Prokofiev, Mozart, Schumann

Regentenbau

The Budapest Festival Orchestra will conclude its guest tour in Bad Kissingen with a vibrant and colorful program. The concert will open with a choral work by Fanny Mendelssohn, a talented member of the Mendelssohn family who remained unrecognized, as orchestra members are keen a cappella singers and committed to the oeuvre of rarely performed composers. After the orchestra musicians, Gramophone Award-winning Julia Fischer’s violin from 1742 will take center stage. The soloist for Beethoven’s lone, grand violin concerto is not only a violinist: she is also a pianist, a quartet player, an instructor and the founder of a youth orchestra. As a reviewer wrote, “She has a pure tone, impeccable intonation, and immaculate technique, but she also has a warm heart and a radiant soul”. The concert will be concluded by the serene symphony of Johannes Brahms, written when he had finally stepped out from Beethoven’s shadow.

Tour: Mendelssohn Hensel, Beethoven, Brahms

The European Orchestra Academy is a joint initiative between the Budapest Festival Orchestra (BFO) and the European Union Youth Orchestra, founded under the visionary guidance of Iván Fischer. This prestigious program provides talented young musicians from around Europe with invaluable orchestral experience alongside the BFO, while also offering them the opportunity to perform as chamber ensembles across numerous European countries.

Masterclass of the European Orchestra Academy – Closing Concert

BFO Rehearsal Hall

The Budapest Festival Orchestra takes a musical trip to the banks and into the depths of the Rhine when offering Schumann’s symphony, inspired by charming experiences and a Wagner scene. The former commemorates a peaceful riverside excursion to the Rhine, and the latter is one of the most famous scenes from the monumental opera tetralogy, The Ring of the Nibelung. The concert will feature two outstanding singers in the roles of Brünhilde and Wotan in one of the most dramatic father-daughter scenes in operatic literature. Swedish soprano Ingela Brimberg, who is very much at home in the Wagnerian repertoire, has sung the title role in numerous productions from Stockholm to Madrid to Bordeaux.

Tour: Alhambra, Granada

Patio of the Palace of Charles V

Three icons of Romanticism, an emotional intermezzo, a world-famous violin concerto and the sounds of the Rhein will make up the program of the Budapest Festival Orchestra in Montpellier. The first notes of the concert will be played in a commemoration: Brahms’s lament seeking calm will be performed in the orchestration and in memory of Victor Aviat, principal oboist of the orchestra, who passed away in May. The Mendelssohn concerto in the middle, comprising a challenging opening movement, a lyrical aria and a finale evoking A Midsummer Night’s Dream will feature the soloist Renaud Capuçon, a returning guest artist for the BFO. The former concertmaster of Claudio Abbado will use his 1737 Guarnieri violin to share the deep and nuanced tones of the piece, while displaying the virtuosity which makes him a favorite of audiences and critics. The program will conclude with a Schumann symphony inspired by pleasant experiences and calling to mind a peaceful riverside excursion.

Tour: Montpellier Capuçon, Fischer

Le Corum

Grandiose romanticism performed by one of the best orchestras in the world. Rachmaninoff and Mahler on the program of the Budapest Festival Orchestra. A song that is most expressive without words. A virtuoso piano concerto that is probably more “comfortable” than the previous one, only according to its composer. A symphony that took the genre to a whole new level. Each one is a beautiful, emotionally resonant piece. The orchestral version of Vocalise, a gem of the vocal repertoire, originally written for voice and piano, will open the concert, followed by Piano Concerto No. 3, with Isata Kanneh-Mason, who has performed at major concert halls in the world, from the Royal Albert Hall to Carnegie Hall, as a soloist, and recorded a number of exciting albums as a Decca Classics artist. After the interval, the orchestra will perform Mahler’s lengthy palette of emotions, his Symphony No. 1, which was premiered in Budapest.

Tour: Menuhin Festival Gstaad

Festival-Zelt Gstaad

The last cheerful sound before the world war, bringing harmony to a seemingly irreconcilable conflict and a groundbreaking string octet: this is the emotional rollercoaster offered by the Budapest Festival Orchestra to audiences in Saanen. A few months after composing his Divertimento, an unimpeded piece invoking also the looming atmosphere of war, Bartók emigrated to America. Iván Fischer reflects on the horrors of that very war, while exploring how, despite all this, we can still admire German culture. The answer is provided, among other things, by Mendelssohn’s piece concluding the concert, which is still a hallmark work in octet literature. In the cantata of Fischer, also the conductor of the concert, the soloists will be Gergely Csikota, the orchestra’s well-traveled trumpet player, and soprano Mirella Hagen, whose voice was praised by Bachtrack as “effortless and ethereal”.

Tour: Menuhin Festival Gstaad – Chamber Concert

St. Mauritius Church Saanen

Tour: La Chaise-Dieu

Saint-Robert Abbey Church, La Chaise-Dieu

A true legend will take the stage with the Budapest Festival Orchestra. The grande dame of the piano, the “priestess of art,” Elisabeth Leonskaja, who won the Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Classical Music Awards (ICMA) in 2020, used to perform in duo with Sviatoslav Richter while conquering the world’s most prestigious concert halls. This time, she will perform one of Mozart’s most popular and grandiose piano concertos, and the only one concluding in a minor key. This piece will be framed in a special manner. The concert will open with music by Schubert, who, in addition to inventing the genre of German songs – writing more than 600 of them –, after six symphonies arrived at an entirely new orchestral language, even if the piece ultimately remained unfinished. Relationships between men and women will take center stage after the intermission. The music of Bartók’s pantomime, The Miraculous Mandarin, will come to life through a storyline that explores questions of body and soul.

Tour: Lucerne Festival Leonskaja, Eva Duda Dance Company, Fischer

KKL Lucerne

Normally the roles are clear: the orchestra sits onstage, and the audience listens from the hall. That’s where the sound blends best, of course. But it raises an intriguing question: how does the orchestra itself experience a concert, and what does the conductor actually hear? “Mittendrin” gives you the answer. You take your seat right among the musicians, who are spread out a bit more widely than usual so that extra chairs can be positioned to accommodate you as guests. Iván Fischer, a master of imaginative ideas, is now bringing to Lucerne a daytime version of the Budapest Festival Orchestra’s much-loved Midnight Music series, already well known in Hungary. 

Tour: Lucerne Festival – Mittendrinn

KKL Luzern

Normally the roles are clear: the orchestra sits onstage, and the audience listens from the hall. That’s where the sound blends best, of course. But it raises an intriguing question: how does the orchestra itself experience a concert, and what does the conductor actually hear? “Mittendrin” gives you the answer.

Tour: Lucerne Festival – Middle Stage

Join us as we usher in a new season and celebrate opera, music, the marvel of the human voice, creativity, and the many-layered artistry of a genre that delights and stirs all the senses.

Iván Fischer has renewed The Magic Flute. Mozart’s opera transports us into a world of enchantment, allowing an escape from the daily grind. Join us for tasty hors d'oeuvres before the curtain rises, served in an atmosphere created by fashion designer Eszter Cselényi and unmistakably evoking the world of Mozart himself. After the opera, guests of the BFO and Müpa Budapest are invited to an informal gathering to meet the artists and creators participating in the performance. Selfies allowed! Gone will be the distance between stage and audience, and art will become tangible. An evening of connections and once-in-a-lifetime encounters.