At the festival, organised for the 3rd time, Liszt’s opera Sardanapalo, will have its Hungarian premiere, the director of the Palace of Arts (Mupa) said. The piece, which has survived in fragments and was reconstructed by David Trippett, can now be heard in Budapest alongside Liszt’s Dante Symphony, performed by the Staatskapelle Weimar, said Csaba Kael.
The festival will feature renowned Hungarian pianist Gergely Boganyi performing pieces by Liszt at a joint concert with the Angelica Girls’ Choir, he said.
Kael said the event will present how Liszt has inspired our times and its generations including Gyorgy Kurtag and Gyorgy Ligeti.
In a highlight, the festival will premiere 97-year-old Gyorgy Kurtag’s only opera, Fin de la partie (Endgame), which is based on Samuel Beckett’s epochal drama, in a staged concert.
In another highlight, the festival will also offer a large-scale piano marathon celebrating the 100th birth anniversary of composer Gyorgy Ligeti, a close friend of Kurtag over six decades. Kael said.
International star guests include the legendary Clayton–Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, founded nearly four decades ago. The band will play new compositions written for this year’s Liszt Fest tour at a concert with Japanese organist Akiko Tsuruga and Hungarian pop and soul singer Gigi Radics as special guests, said Janina Szomolanyi, the festival’s operative director.
Other guest stars include Polish pianist-composer Hania Rani, who likes to transcend genres and experiment with electronics and vocals, and the 50-year-old Kronos Quartet which will be on stage in a joint act with award-winning Iranian singer-composer Mahsa Vahdat.
Iconic performers of Gypsy dance and music, the Boban Markovic Orkestar, Parno Graszt, Monika Lakatos and the Roma Fest Gypsy Dance Theatre, will evoke the mood of a Roma wedding feast with a joint staged concert, she said.