Name: Jonathan Cohen and the BFO’s Baroque Ensemble
Start: 2027-02-06T15:30:00
Location: Liszt Academy

Vivica Genaux

Jonathan Cohen

Budapest Fes­ti­val Orches­tra

Sunday Chamber Music – 1

BFO Rehearsal Hall

The legendary Sir John Eliot Gardiner will conduct the Budapest Festival Orchestra for the first time! The Honorary Doctor of the Liszt Academy and multiple Grammy Award-winning conductor rose to international fame mainly through his performances of early music, but he also enjoys exploring Romantic compositions. He conducts with “boundless energy,” to borrow a characterization from The Guardian, be it Joseph Haydn or Jean Sibelius, the composers featured in his program. Although the two composers arguably have little in common, the dual threads of patriotism and cosmopolitanism run through the concert. The evening’s centerpiece is a work from Haydn’s triumphant London period, composed following his release from decades of service to the Esterházy court. The program concludes with a Sibelius symphony inspired by an excursion to Italy. With the opening piece, BFO musicians will once again demonstrate their talents as a choir with a deeply moving performance of the heart-wrenching song by the Finnish composer.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the BFO

Müpa Budapest

Iván Fischer was requested by the Berlin Konzerthaus to compose an opera for children based on Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s world-famous picture book, The Gruffalo. The humorous opera now premieres in Hungary in translation by Ádám Nádasdy. The production is recommended for children between the ages of 3 and 10.

The opera follows the adventures of a clever little mouse who, while strolling through the forest, meets a fox, an owl, and a snake, all eager to eat him. To escape, he invents a fearsome creature called the Gruffalo, with terrible claws, terrible tusks, and, believe it or not, a particular taste for foxes, owls, and snakes. The trick works, until, quite out of the blue, a real Gruffalo appears, so our clever mouse must outsmart him, too.

After the performance, members of the audience who are brave enough will have a chance to take a picture with the Gruffalo and the other characters of this delightfully fanciful tale.

The Gruffalo – A Children’s Opera by Iván Fischer

“The rays of sun chase night away.” If there is an opera for everyone, an opera about the very essence of life, it’s The Magic Flute. For the first time since 2015, Iván Fischer will once again bring to the stage Mozart’s philosophical tale, where good and bad, light and darkness, right and wrong, courage and fear, wisdom and superstition, vengeance and mercy are juxtaposed. The opera, which is Mozart’s last work for the stage, is an initiation ceremony and a moral tale about the journey to adulthood. “It’s an inscrutable work of magical power,” says Fischer, who is particularly awed by the opera’s optimism, humor, playfulness, fairy tale-like quality, deep humanism, or, in a single word, complexity. The international cast includes Mozart specialists from the world’s leading opera houses, several of whom are already familiar to the BFO’s audiences.

“The Magic Flute is a childhood experience for everyone that accompanies them throughout their lives. Because this opera speaks to both children and adults.” Fischer shares his own experiences, as he and his brother participated in a production of the work held in the Opera House as children. Much later, the Festival Orchestra’s opera performances also traditionally began with a semi-staged production of The Magic Flute at the Liszt Academy in the early 1990s.

Winterfestspiele Baden-Baden: Fischer and Die Zauberflöte

Festspielhaus Baden-Baden

“The rays of sun chase night away.” If there is an opera for everyone, an opera about the very essence of life, it’s The Magic Flute. For the first time since 2015, Iván Fischer will once again bring to the stage Mozart’s philosophical tale, where good and bad, light and darkness, right and wrong, courage and fear, wisdom and superstition, vengeance and mercy are juxtaposed. The opera, which is Mozart’s last work for the stage, is an initiation ceremony and a moral tale about the journey to adulthood. “It’s an inscrutable work of magical power,” says Fischer, who is particularly awed by the opera’s optimism, humor, playfulness, fairy tale-like quality, deep humanism, or, in a single word, complexity. The international cast includes Mozart specialists from the world’s leading opera houses, several of whom are already familiar to the BFO’s audiences.

Vicenza Opera Festival: Fischer and The Magic Flute

Teatro Olimpico

In the 2026–27 season, the Concertino series will return, with the BFO’s chamber orchestra offering both well-known masterpieces and unfairly overlooked works from the Baroque to the twentieth century. The ensemble, which will perform without a conductor, will be led by Daniel Bard, one of the orchestra’s concertmasters. The energetic works by Austro-Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff blend modern sounds and neoclassical elements with jazz and the dance rhythms of various national traditions. Schulhoff’s composition will be followed by one of the earliest trombone concertos in music literature, featuring Attila Sztán, the BFO’s Junior Prima Award winning musician, as soloist. After the concerto, which blends graceful elegance with structural rigidity, the ensemble will perform Handel’s ever-faster concerto grosso, composed for full string ensemble without soloists. The program will conclude with Tchaikovsky’s popular chamber piece invoking Mozart and Haydn.

Concertino – 1

Liszt Academy

In November, the concert hall of Müpa Budapest will be filled with spring birdsong. The program, which will remind us of the importance of preserving our planet, will open with the music of Einojuhani Rautavaara, the greatest Finnish composer of the second half of the twentieth century, who pays tribute to the breathtaking Finnish landscape and wildlife with a concerto composed for birds and orchestra. The closing piece will be a symphony by Beethoven, himself also a passionate nature lover. The symphony evokes memories of rural life, including a bit of woodwind ornithology. Between the two, Mozart’s final violin concerto—a fresh and colorful composition—will be performed, featuring Georgian Lisa Batiashvili as the “fearless, tonally rich and technically immaculate” (The Guardian) soloist. The orchestra will be seated under an enormous tree symbolizing the love of nature and our sense of responsibility for the natural world.

Concert for Nature

In November, the concert hall of Müpa Budapest will be filled with spring birdsong. The concert, which will remind us of the importance of preserving our planet, will open with the music of Einojuhani Rautavaara, the greatest Finnish composer of the second half of the twentieth century, who pays tribute to the breathtaking Finnish landscape and wildlife with a concerto composed for birds and orchestra. The closing piece will be a symphony by Beethoven, himself also a passionate nature lover. The symphony evokes memories of rural life, including a bit of woodwind ornithology. Between the two, Mozart’s final violin concerto—a fresh and colorful composition—will be performed, featuring Georgian Lisa Batiashvili as the “fearless, tonally rich and technically immaculate” (The Guardian) soloist. The orchestra will be seated under an enormous tree symbolizing the love of nature and our sense of responsibility for the natural world.

Concert for Nature – Storytime with Iván

Will you come at midnight and listen to some classical music while lounging on a beanbag, just an arm’s length from the musicians? This question might have sounded weird ten years ago but, thanks to the Festival Orchestra, Midnight Music has since become one of the best and most popular programs for those who have a keen interest in culture but don’t like the constraints at traditional concerts. There is no need to dress up, and these concerts won’t last for hours; instead, you can enjoy the friendly, relaxed atmosphere, made even more personable by Iván Fischer’s witty comments about the pieces being performed A community event, a party instead of a party, a memorable experience – who said classical music was boring and rigid?

Midnight Music

Castle Garden, Budapest

In November, the concert hall of the Isarphilharmonie will be filled with spring birdsong. The program, which will remind us of the importance of preserving our planet, will open with the music of Einojuhani Rautavaara, the greatest Finnish composer of the second half of the twentieth century, who pays tribute to the breathtaking Finnish landscape and wildlife with a concerto composed for birds and orchestra. The closing piece will be a symphony by Beethoven, himself also a passionate nature lover. The symphony evokes memories of rural life, including a bit of woodwind ornithology. Between the two, Mozart’s final violin concerto—a fresh and colorful composition—will be performed, featuring Georgian Lisa Batiashvili as the “fearless, tonally rich and technically immaculate” (The Guardian) soloist. The orchestra will be seated under an enormous tree symbolizing the love of nature and our sense of responsibility for the natural world.

Tour: Concert for Nature in Munich

Isarphilharmonie, Munich

A closeness to nature and birdsong run through the Festival Orchestra’s guest performance. The program, which will remind us of the importance of preserving our planet, will open with the music of Einojuhani Rautavaara, the greatest Finnish composer of the second half of the twentieth century, who pays tribute to the breathtaking Finnish landscape and wildlife with a concerto composed for birds and orchestra. The closing piece will be a symphony by Beethoven, himself also a passionate nature lover. The symphony evokes memories of rural life, including a bit of woodwind ornithology. Between the two, the program includes Bartók’s unfinished piano concerto, composed in the final months of his life, which likewise brings the murmur of the forest into the concert hall. The soloist in the concerto, the Russian-American Kirill Gerstein, has been described by international critics as a sonic poet who enchants his listeners, and as one of today’s most intelligent musical thinkers, an artist who always finds something new and interesting in music. In a spirit of love and responsibility toward nature, the orchestra will take its place beneath a giant tree.

Tour: Concert for Nature in Ferrara

Teatro Comunale di Ferrara

Tour: Concert for Nature in Antwerp

Koningin Elisabethzaal, Antwerp

In the BFO’s early music concert, ethereal dance movements alternate with arias about burning passion. Jonathan Cohen, the orchestra’s returning guest conductor and a British expert on Baroque music, will ensure historically faithful interpretations, while Sigrid T’Hooft, an indispensable contributor to the series, will be responsible for historical gestures. The star of the night will be Vivica Genaux; the Alaska-born mezzo-soprano captured public attention with her CD featuring baroque arias associated with the repertoire of the famous castrato Farinelli. Her recordings are regarded as gems of historic performance. Genaux, a specialist in the Baroque and bel canto repertoires, captivates listeners instantly even when singing arias taken out of their original context. Following the orchestral suites with which the program opens, audiences can enjoy her beautiful voice and extraordinary technical prowess in arias by Vivaldi and Hasse, which alternate between sorrowful and fiery, lyrical and unstoppably virtuosic.