Carl Maria von Weber composed a piano work in 1819 with the German title of Aufforderung zum Tanz, which means “Invitation to the Dance”. In Hungary, it is known as Invitation to the Waltz with some justification: the music clearly evokes the world of Viennese waltzes. To this day, Weber’s composition has been an audience favourite. Many contemporary musicians admired it: Liszt played it in his concerts and Hector Berlioz arranged it for orchestra. Felix Mendelssohn travelled to Italy at the ag...e of twenty-two, and in particular, Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples, Milan and the Italian landscape made a deep impression upon him. The “Italian” Symphony bubbles with harmony and joy throughout its first movement. The second movement expresses a subtle, lyrical and nostalgic sense of longing, while the third movement evokes his homeland with a German dance. The finale is concluded with a superbly stylised Neapolitan leaping dance, the saltarello. “You have to expunge the banalities, and make some unplayable sections playable.” So said Nikolai Rubinstein, the friend of Piotr Tchaikovsky when he showed him the score for his first piano concerto. Ordinarily, Tchaikovsky was inclined to heed his friends’ advice but on his occasion, he stuck to his guns, changed nothing except the dedication. He scrubbed out Rubinstein’s name and replaced it with that of Hans von Bülow. The great German pianist and conductor found the solo part highly taxing but after careful study declared that “the work prodigiously compensates for the effort”. It was premièred in Boston in 1875, and then played in a succession of German cities where it was acclaimed everywhere. Indeed, this was the work, which established the composer’s international reputation.
Parking information
We wish to inform you that in the event that Müpa Budapest's underground garage and outdoor car park are operating at full capacity, it is advisable to plan for increased waiting times when you arrive. In order to avoid this, we recommend that you depart for our events in time, so that you you can find the ideal parking spot quickly and smoothly and arrive for our performance in comfort. The Müpa Budapest underground garage gates will be operated by an automatic number plate recognition system. Parking is free of charge for visitors with tickets to any of our paid performances on that given day. The detailed parking policy of Müpa Budapest is available here.
Safe ticket purchase
Dear Visitors, please note that only tickets purchased from the Müpa website and official ticket offices are guaranteed to be valid. To avoid possible inconvenience, we suggest buying tickets to our performances and concerts via the mupa.hu website, the Interticket national network (jegy.hu) or at our official ticket offices.