Honvéd Male Choir

Honvéd Male Choir present their programme Magnificat/Jazznificat in the Liszt Academy on the eve of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Johann Sebastian Bach’s Magnificat ranks as one of the most popular works of music of all time. This concert features it in its original form and in an unusual arrangement. Jazznificat is the transcription of Bach’s Magnificat by László Adrián Nagy, the Male Choir’s pianist-organist-répétiteur, in which the Bach themes are given a twist and spiced up with blues, funk, gospel and rock traits. Army Male Choir are joined by several superb jazz musicians and popular soloists.

And how did the arrangement come about? This is what the arranger László Adrián Nagy had to say: “Bach’s Magnificat is a veritable jewel box. Despite its relatively modest ‘dimensions’, it displays incredible musical, emotional and intellectual riches, all dressed in the most magnificent of Baroque music. On witnessing such perfection, one inevitably ponders: how would the maestro have written the same thing in a later age, in a different musical language? How would he have written it today? With other instruments, other musical tools, in another rhythm? The question is rhetorical, we will never know. We can only take a guess at the answer: it would be just as brilliant.”