Liszt Academy hosted again students from partner institutions
Every year, the Liszt Academy organises a workshop and a concluding concert as part of an Erasmus programme, this time the Hungarian and foreign students learned from and performed with violinist Péter Kováts as a string orchestra.
In the framework of the EU cooperation Blended Intensive Program (BIP), 3-3 students from several leading European music higher education institutions - this year from the universities of Helsinki, Paris, The Hague, Oslo, Cluj-Napoca - come to Budapest year after year to participate in an intensive workshop with students of the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music. The programme lasts several days and concludes by a public concert. This is the sixth project, as in the past years one full-orchestra project, two projects for wind ensemble, a chamber music project on the theme of György Ligeti to mark the centenary of the composer's birth, and a string orchestra project were organized.
The focus of this year's string orchestra programme was again Bartók's Divertimento, after the great success of last year's project led by Barnabás Kelemen, in which the students learned this work, among others. The feedback from foreign students is that it is a great experience to learn from a Hungarian teacher how to play this iconic piece, which is one of the most difficult compositions for string orchestra. They will also learn about the noble tradition of the Hungarian String School (Hubay, Tibay, Popper, Pál Lukács, Vilmos Tátrai, Perényi, etc.), all in the beautiful Art Nouveau building where Bartók performed at the opening ceremony and later taught.
The first half of this year's closing concert on 31 October featured Schubert's Overture in C minor, Mozart's mature two-movement composition Adagio and Fugue in C minor, followed by Respighi's Suite No 3 of Ancient Airs and Dances, a setting of Renaissance and Baroque melodies. The second half of the programme saw Bartók's Divertimento and Romanian Folk Dances, being an excellent opportunity for them to get to know the Hungarian composer's works, which form the basis of the string orchestra repertoire.
Prior to the rehearsals, composer Máté Balogh, teacher at the Liszt Academy, gave an online lecture on the analysis of the works on the programme (in terms of format, harmony, style, etc.), and then Péter Kováts, a violinist and lecturer of the university, conducted a week-long rehearsal period leading up to the concert.
Péter Kováts, a Bartók-Pásztory Prize-winner violinist and associate professor in the Strings Department at the Liszt Academy, has performed as a soloist and chamber musician in almost every European country, in the United States and in several Central and South American countries. He has given concerts in major concert halls around the world, including the Verdi Hall in Milan, the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, and L'Auditorio in Barcelona, and his recordings have been broadcast by Hungarian Radio and Television, France 3, Slovenian National Television, and several American radio and television stations. He has also given master classes in many prestigious institutions and, before his university career, he was a teacher and later director of the Dohnányi Music College in Veszprém.
