Hungary reopens Liszt hall, Budapest's musical heart
by Michael Roddy

Reuters    Translate This Article
22 October 2013

* Glittering gala shows music alive again in Liszt hall

* 40 million euro reconstruction sets academy for future

* Rector envisions 'Silicon Valley' of music in Hungary

BUDAPEST, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Hungary celebrated a rich musical heritage on Tuesday with a gala black-tie concert to mark the refurbishment and reopening of the main concert hall of the Liszt Academy music school in Budapest.

Starting with a rousing brass fanfare to show off the hall's famously pure acoustics, followed by a Brahms Hungarian dance, a folk song and Bartok violin duos, the programme showed Hungary is a place for music and the Liszt Academy a place to learn it.

Since Hungarian is such a notoriously difficult language, 'perhaps we show our talents more in music', Prime Minister Viktor Orban told the packed audience.

His government brought to term a 10-year project to renew the almost 107-year-old Art Deco building housing the music academy founded by Franz Liszt, the world's first piano superstar and one of the 19th century's great composers.

Orban said it was his intention to spend more on the arts and culture 'because life is more than a struggle for living'.

Asked by Reuters before the concert began if he thought Budapest, which now will have six major music venues, may perhaps be oversupplied, Orban said: 'No, we need even more'.

One of the world's cherished concert venues, where audience and performers alike praise the acoustics, the Liszt Academy's 'Large Hall' has been painstakingly restored during a four-year closure to its early 20th-century style.

'The starting point was that this building is more than 100 years old and had never been renovated,' said rector Andras Batta, 60, who cedes his post on Nov. 1 to harpist Andrea Vigh.

'Practice rooms were shabby, heating was bad, there was no air conditioning, there were a lot of problems so I thought with such great music and immense possibilities we must grow, we must develop it as one of the 21st century's great concert halls.'

The hall was reopened on Liszt's birthday, a day before Hungary commemorates its 1956 failed revolution against Soviet rule. Students will return to the building in February.

The 1907 hall, where such greats as pianist Sviatoslav Richter, violinist Yehudi Menuhin and conductor Leonard Bernstein performed, has been panelled with ebony-hued wood laced with white geometric decoration, replacing a drab brown coating dating from communist times.

New 'green rooms' for soloists and catering facilities are also part of the 40-million-euro ($54.7 million) overhaul.

The 800-plus students who used to take their classes at the building housing the concert hall have been accommodated at a new building a few blocks away, named for the late Hungarian avant-garde composer Gyorgy Ligeti.

A new chamber opera house is named for the late Jewish conductor Sir Georg Solti, who fled Nazi-allied Hungary before World War Two.

Unveiling a modern statue of Solti placed in front of his alma mater, his widow, Lady Valerie Solti, speaking in Hungarian to end her speech, said: 'Solti has come home.'

($1 = 0.7312 euros)

(Editing by Mark Heinrich and Tom Pfeiffer)

© Copyright 2013 Reuters

Reuters content is the intellectual property of Thomson Reuters or its third party content providers. Any copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. 'Reuters' and the Reuters Logo are trademarks of Thomson Reuters and its affiliated companies. For additional information on other Reuters media services please visit reuters.com/newsagency .

Every day Global Good News documents the rise of a better quality of life dawning in the world from good news reported by the press; and highlights the need for introducing Natural Law based—Total Knowledge based—programmes to bring the support of Nature to every individual, raise the quality of life of every society, and create a lasting state of world peace.



Translation software is not perfect; however if you would like to try it, you can translate this page using:

(Google) Select a language English to Afrikaans English to Albanian English to Arabic English to Belarusian English to Bulgarian English to Catalan English to Chinese (Simplified) English to Chinese (Traditional) English to Croatian English to Czech English to Danish English to Dutch English to Estonian English to Filipino English to Finnish English to French English to Galician English to German English to Greek English to Hebrew English to Hindi English to Hungarian English to Icelandic English to Indonesian English to Irish English to Italian English to Japanese English to Korean English to Latvian English to Lithuanian English to Macedonian English to Malay English to Maltese English to Norwegian English to Persian English to Polish English to Portuguese English to Romanian English to Russian English to Serbian English to Slovak English to Slovenian English to Spanish English to Swahili English to Swedish English to Thai English to Turkish English to Ukrainian English to Vietnamese English to Welsh English to Yiddish

(Altavista babelfish) Select a languageEnglish to Chinese-simpEnglish to Chinese-tradEnglish to DutchEnglish to PortugueseEnglish to FrenchEnglish to GermanEnglish to GreekEnglish to ItalianEnglish to JapaneseEnglish to KoreanEnglish to RussianEnglish to Spanish

Send Good News to Global Good News.

Your comments.