Concert celebrating the 70th Birthday of János Vajda Presented by Liszt Academy

Kossuth Prize composer János Vajda is an artist with universal interests. In his oeuvre shaped in the spirit of the classical tradition we find all the important genres from opera to concertos, grand orchestral compositions to oratorios, chamber works to choral pieces. In his stage works, he has turned to especially valuable and very varied literary sources, being inspired by Thomas Mann, Mihály Csokonai Vitéz, Georg Büchner, Frigyes Karinthy and Federico García Lorca. He has always rejected the convulsive search for novelties, believing that past values designate valid trends in the present day. “It can be just as exciting how we can live with the inherited cultural experience of many centuries. Music makes its approach firstly through the senses, and considering its primary impact it is a primitive thing: the pulse races, it sends chills down my spine, I sweat, cry, laugh... One cannot turn this off from the creative process, because without it only dead things can be birthed,” he once said in an interview.