Concertmaster: János Rolla Soloist: István Várdai – cello Haydn: Symphony in D major, Hob. I:13 Haydn: Cello Concerto in C major, Hob. VIIb:1 György Orbán: Farewell (to Count Rasumovsky) Schubert: Symphony No. 5 in B flat major, D. 485 The 2009 series of Hungarian Symphonic Panorama is opened by the Hungarian orchestra with the longest history. After it was formed in 1853 by Ferenc Erkel, it served for nearly ninety years as Hungary’s only professional symphony orchestra. It was through them that Hungarian audiences heard all that was new by Hungarian and international composers, and they also promoted Hungarian music outside the country, and the orchestra served as a model for subsequently formed domestic groups. They were conducted by musicians such as Liszt, Brahms, Furtwängler and Klemperer. This evening, they will be conducted not by a traditional conductor but by János Rolla, concertmaster and artistic director of the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra. The cello soloist István Várdai is a young man who in 2007, came third in perhaps the toughest of all cello tests, the International Tchaikovsky Competition. We shall hear an early symphony written by Joseph Haydn when he was employed by Prince Nicholas Esterházy. The tuneful cello solo in the second movement was played by a gifted musician in the ensemble, Haydn’s friend Joseph Weigl. He wrote his popular Cello Concerto in C major at around this time, expressly for Weigl to play. György Orbán’s piece is the last of a three-part cycle, the first of which was written for string quartet and brimming with Russian melodies. This forms the relationship with Beethoven’s quartets and the name of Beethoven’s Russian patron. Franz Schubert’s upbeat and life-affirming Symphony No. 5 was written in 1816 and already carried the hallmarks of Schubert’s mature music yet is also Mozartean in its gestures. It sits on the border between classicism and romanticism.

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