Two Requiems Orbán & Mozart

Born in Transylvania, but living in Hungary since 1979, György Orbán (1947), Müpa Budapest's composer of the 2023/2024 season, is an outstanding figure of Hungarian contemporary music, who has always strived for unambiguousness in his works, with a special affinity to vocal genres, so listeners can rightly expect a direct approach and intimacy from his Requiem. Composed in 2004 at the request of the Béla Bartók International Choir Competition, his Requiem received an Artisjus Award in the ..."Classical Music Composition of the Year” category. Mozart's Requiem is the composer's swan song, shrouded in legends by the mysterious story of its genesis and its incompleteness. Before Verdi's poignant Requiem, no other piece in the history of music had ever portrayed the drama of a man bidding farewell to life with such clarity and nobility. The soloists, joining the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir, include soprano Réka Kristóf, discovered by the Virtuosos competition, mezzo-soprano Dorottya Láng, a favourite with Hungarian audiences after major successes abroad, and alto Szilvia Szilágyi, a regular performer in opera productions at the Csokonai Theatre in Debrecen. Tenor Gyula Rab is a soloist of the Hungarian State Opera and the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich, while Russian bass Aleksei Kulagin was the runner-up in the 5th Eva Marton International Singing Competition in 2022. Conductor János Kovács certainly needs no introduction, since he is a regular at the helm of the country's leading symphonic orchestras.

The concert will be preceded from 6.30 pm by an introductory presentation in Hungarian entitled Prologue, by musicologist Gergely Fazekas, where concert ticket holders will be invited to get to know the performing musicians and the works to be performed more closely.