1 2 3

New concert season ‘Silverflash’ by Pannon Philharmonic  has been launched

The orchestra presented the programme of their new concert season at a press conference held on 9 September, 2020. The press was advised by the director of the ensemble, Zsolt Horváth, their chief conductors Tibor Bogányi and Gilbert Varga (online) and conductor András Vass.

 

SILVERFLASH

2020-2021

 

Self-reflection and joy are in the focus of upcoming Silverflash concert season

The Pannon Philharmonic challenges the pandemic crisis with the power of music

An extraordinary concert season in an extraordinary year. It will be ten years in December, 2020 that Kodály Centre, cherished home of the PFZ was opened. In 2021, the Pannon Philharmonic, one of the oldest music ensembles of Hungary - founded in 1811 - will celebrate its 210th anniversary. As the orchestra deeply believes that music is an absolutely fundamental need, conductor Gilbert Varga invites us to join the ensemble on a musical journey in defiance of the pandemic, while Tibor Bogányi draws our attention to the heart-warming power of music. The title of the concert season Silverflash does not refer to glamour but is the joyful feast of pure musical essence hidden in the depths. In the fall, we will have the opportunity to encounter prestigious Hungarian soloists, while the spring will bless us some prominent international figures from the world of music.

 

 

„This concert season will be a bit like a journey where we can join the audience. A very long trip criss-crossing across continents and through history.  I believe, the combination of these is the most catching quality of our programme concept.”

(Gilbert Varga)

„We are launching a very special concert season...our musicians are not scared, they play as long as they can.
Music makes us better and more resilient. Music possesses a power that helps us triumph over all hardships.”

(Tibor Bogányi)

Dear Music fans,


What a year it has been! From abroad, Hungary might seem to be in a somewhat better position than many other countries around the world, so I sincerely hope that we will soon be able to play before a live audience !

In spring, orchestra rehearsals were replaced by individual practise sessions, whose fruits you can soon benefit from: we are ready to present a highly challenging repertoire in this concert season. My father once recalled that he had seen the happiest faces ever after the war. The audience is a prime element of the performing arts, the fan club of the orchestra. You will therefore see a joyful awe on the faces of our musicians when they can play before you again at last!

The upcoming concert season will take us through three centuries of music across Europe: with the kind contribution of numerous Hungarian guest artists and through the works of prominent Hungarian composers we will discover this continent from France to Russia, from Italy to Norway.
We are looking forward to seeing you in this adventurous season in our shared shelter in difficult times, in Kodály Centre.


Gilbert Varga
chief conductor

 

Dear friends, music lovers,

We all know and feel that a highly unusual year lies ahead of us.
A period in our life that resembles the endgame of a chess match: there is no point in hesitating, we must take a bold step and attend concerts where music washes over our souls and braces us with the most important thing, the gift of resilience.


Come and listen to us, because despite the long break, our standards have become even higher: we’ve become better, more accomplished and more courageous in our performance style than ever before, and you are sure to sense it!
Kodály Centre still creates a sublime environment for each note. Nearly a decade in this  marvellous city and leading this great orchestra make me feel very proud. We have gone a long way together and have improved greatly. My formidable and deeply inspiring fellow-conductor, Gilbert Varga and I have been searching for new paths of progress. Is music a prime element for you too? For me, it certainly is. It is an indescribable and intense miracle, an abstract means of expression, which generates incredible changes in the human body. Bruckner, Brahms, Strauss, Kodály or Gyöngyösi. They all make us healthier and stronger. Take a glimpse at the programme we composed for you, and let’s meet in Kodály Centre!

It is with love and pure that we will welcome you!

Tibor Bogányi
chief conductor

 

 

Honoured Music friends,


What lies behind the seemingly catchy title ‘Silverflash’ is actually humility. Humility that endures the hardships of becoming noble and refined. When you hear this title, do not picture some shiny silver but the moment in the middle of the purification process of the molten, glowing silver that is full of possibilities. The metal resists the heat until this very moment, and it liberates itself only of the contaminants, the redundancies, the impurities. From the moment of silver glance, in the intense heat, the pure silver evaporates.
The community of the Pannon Philharmonic is well-aware that intense work, off-key notes and stumbling clumsily to find a shared rhythm for a hundred musicians cannot be avoided if we want to produce pure silver-quality at our concerts. We do all this with humility in the service of music.

In the past fifteen years, our ensemble has worked hard, proved itself, established itself  through the challenges of economic and social transformation.
In the year of the coronavirus crisis, this intensity has reached its peak. Not only were we forced to revisit the questions of government support, the rivalry with the Budapest-based symphony orchestras and the appreciation of our sponsors but we also see with amazement that the necessity of classical music, the fundamental importance of music and of course, the employment of musicians are not self-evident.

Silver could also burn away while glowing without leaving a trace behind, but its does not. Instead, it appears in all colours of the rainbow as a flash, as if it was saying: “so far, and no further”. I could also do my job without complaint as the director of one of the leading symphony orchestras of this country, as I normally do in my daily life, but in the introduction of the new, Silverflash season, I feel it is my absolute duty to draw your attention to the fact that with the excuse of COVID-19, we cannot exempt ourselves from the responsibilities of a silversmith. The purifying force of glowing heat becomes a destructive furnace without the right decisions.

With the title of the 2020/21 concert season, the Pannon Philharmonic marks the moment of silver glance in their own life. We are not any symphony orchestras from the country-side but an ensemble that has been working with singular intensity for ten years as the living soul of Kodály Centre. In this concert season, we - as an excellent silversmith - welcome all those who support the future of the orchestra with their decisions.

The community-building power of music ensembles and the beneficial effect of music on our soul and heart are of an immense value. It is our shared responsibility to raise the professional standards of Hungarian artists and artistic communities. Let us not miss the light at the end of the “tunnel”: let us save and take our values with us over to the other side of the pandemic. The Pannon Philharmonic do all in its power to restore our confidence in the future in the light of a silver glance!

The upcoming season is of utmost importance to our orchestra. Kodály Centre will turn 10 years old in December, 2020, and then the 210th jubilee year of the orchestra is going to kick off in January. We are about to set off on the journey of the next decades with renewed energy and dynamism. Join us on our path!

Zsolt Horváth
Director

. . . 

 

The season kicks off at a thrilling note: within a month, pianist  Balog József takes to the stage in Pécs with two piano concertos of very different styles under the batons of the two conductors of PFZ endowed with very different characters. Gilbert Varga and Tibor Bogányi will showcase the versatile talent of the pianist through the works of great composers. On 10 September, at the opening concert of the season, the internationally highly acclaimed piano virtuoso, József Balog performs Richard Strauss’s Burleske for Piano and Orchestra conducted by principal conductor Tibor Bogányi.

Each one of the soloists welcomed by the Pannon Philharmonic in its 2020/2021 concert season is a master of their instruments, and the works to be performed are masterpieces refined to perfection. Both well-known classical pieces and novelties will get featured, and the concerts held to replace those that had to be cancelled in the spring will enrich our concert selection even more profusely.

On 10 September and on the International Music Day on 1 October, the orchestra launches the season with two musical treats: Pianist József Balog  shows two of his faces to us when he plays the piano solo part both in Richard Strauss and Beethoven’s piano concertos under the batons of  Tibor Bogányi and Gilbert Varga. In this way, our audience can enjoy two piano concertos of very different styles  conducted by two maestros of very different characters within one month. Furthermore, those visitors who wish to attend both concert events can purchase a combined ticket with a 30% discount in the ticket office of Kodály Centre.

The autumn will bring to Pécs the greatest Hungarian solo performers and la crème de la crème of vocalists:  Emőke BaráthPéter Frankl, Kristóf Baráti,  Gergely Bogányi,  Dezső Ránki. Maestro Bogányi’ Bruckner Series will continue, and we will also celebrate the premieres of Levente Gyönyösi and András Visky’s composition To be or not to be, Zoltán Bánfalvi’s   Cello Concerto and the Donghood Shin Violin Concerto (staged jointly with the Eötvös Foundation).  Also such rarely performed pieces will also feature on our concert programme as Richard Strauss’s An Alpine Symphony. In tribute to the Beethoven Year 2020, the great composer’s several overtures, piano concertos and symphonies  will be presented in Kodály Centre, among them his deservedly popular Symphony No. 9.

Principal conductor Gilbert Varga commented:„There are several things I’m looking forward to during this concert season. I was around seventeen when I last played with Peter Frankl, and we haven’t worked together for nearly fifty years. Now we’ll have the opportunity to do so, which will be a very exciting experience. Also because Peter will perhaps play Bartók’s Piano Concerto for a hundredth time at this very concert. I’ll have the chance to collaborate with many great soloists, and I’m very curious - among others - about the highly gifted Júlia Pusker. In connection with the 10th anniversary of Kodály Center, I can hardly wait to meet its superb designer architects. This building is a paradise for musicians and its completion required a lot of incredibly hard word.”

 

Our traditional Christmas concert will feature - alongide the Pannon Philharmonic  Festival Choir - the Savaria Baroque Orchestra invited by PFZ, while our resident orchestra are preparing for a joint production with Ballet Pécs and the Bóbita Puppet Theatre: The birth of an evolving new tradition, the performance of The Nutcracker - this time directed by György Böhm - will be a great source of joy for the young and old.  In the hope of a positive turn in the pandemic situation, in the spring we will welcome international soloists:  Nelson Goerner will render a piano concerto by Chopin conducted by Gilbert Varga, then the most sought-after percussionist of the world Martin Grubinger will  collaborate with Tibor Bogányi, and the South-Korean cello virtuoso Sung-Won Yang will play under the baton of Peter Eötvös. We will carry on staging our opera series in co-production with Müpa with the kind participation of such opera stars as  Maria Barakova and Giuliana Glanfaldoni. Violinist Elina Vähälä will take to our stage with an Oscar-winning violin concerto, and pianist Klara Min will delight the audience with Corigliano’s rarely staged piano concerto.  

Principal conductor Tibor Bogányi highlighted:„Yes, I do think that there is clear progress. Tomorrow, we will be able to perform Bruckner’s Symphony No. 3, which is new in our series with such force and such high professional standards because it is the fruit of the efforts that the orchestra and Maestro Varga and I were making  during the involuntary spring break . We worked very hard during the self-isolation period, and this can be clearly perceived now.”

We feel especially honoured that one of our greatest Hungarian composers, Peter Eötvös entrusted the premiere of his new composition Sirens’ Song to the Pannon Philharmonic within the concert titled World-famous Hungarians. In addition to this premier conducted by the composer himself, Béla Bartók’s masterpiece Cantata Profana will also be featured the very same night. In the spring we will welcome such prominent Hungarian soloists as violinist  Júlia Pusker or the Pécs-born pianist Mihály Boros. One of the excellent violists of the orchestra,Jaroslav Murin will take to the stage alongside oboist Márta Berger under the baton of András Vass to perform a selection of Italian compositions.

As the conductor András Vass put it: „The arts, culture and religious life all reflect the world that surrounds us. We, as an orchestra can convey our message to human hearts without words, and all our productions reflect upon social processes in one way or another. Our so-called western civilisation today cannot be pictured without the community-building power of culture and without the communities themselves that are born from values. We must safeguard the foundations of our culture even in the current situation.” 

The Müpa concert series consisting of five concerts will continue in Budapest in October, and the PFZ children’s series will also be launched in Kodály Centre. With consideration to the pandemic situation, our 1MoreChance series has been suspended for this concert season.

Our Pécs-based audience will be familiar with the already established subscription system: lovers of piano music  are awaited for 5+1 concerts within the framework of the Pannonicum Series at 6pm on Saturdays. The subscribers of the  Kodály Series can enjoy 8+1 concerts at 7pm on Thursdays. This time the series’ motto goes:  To the lovers of contemporary and ideal music. Vistors of the Musica Sacra Series are welcome to spiritually and musically tune into the Christmas holidays on 3 occasions.  The Breitner Series  offers 8+1 special musical treats Attaracted by opposites  and the mysterious violin to its subscription holders at 7pm on Thursdays. On Five invaluable Friday nights, the Pannon Philharmonic welcomes its Budapest-based audience in Müpa at 7.30 pm within the framework of the Pannon Series.  

PFZ provides all members of your family with great programmes ranging from the Baby Passport Series (for babies in their mummies’ belly), to the Beanbag Series (for toddlers under 3 years) and to the SnailShell Series (for kindergarten kids) right until teenage years at the #NoBabel music-chat.

Our exclusive  Spring Ball is open to all those gourmets who take pleasure in elegance, gastronomic specialities and would enjoy a life-long experience. The highlight of the evening is the selection of  a ball queen, but there will also be a dance school, an out-posted casino, a vintage photography corner available. The latter will be take us back to the foundation year of the orchestra, and of course for the sake of a unique vintage photo you’ll have the opportunity to try on the marvellous 19th century clothes worn by the aristocracy of the period.

The management of the orchestra thanks their audience for the disciplined and supportive presence during the challenging times of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Pannon Philharmonic reacts to the pandemic situation that severely affects the cultural scene with an appropriate and professional response. Among other things, with live streams in cinema-quality and high standard vocal technology we strive to allow our audience to enjoy classical music also online.

Naturally, the orchestra make their effective policies regarding the attendance of the concerts in tune with the facility management of Kodály Centre and Müpa and in accordance with the effective legislation for the highest level of prevention. We will keep you posted on our policy updates.

Hauni Hungária has been a VIP sponsor of the Pannon Philharmonic for many years. In 2020, the orchestra is proud to welcome the Pannon Thermal Power Plant, member of the Veolia Group as their new VIP sponsor.

 

 

 

Back

Contact

jegypénztár

Ticket Office of Kodály Centre

7622 Pécs,
Breuer Marcell sétány 4.

Special closing days HERE.

Opening hours:
From Monday to Friday:
10 AM – 6 PM

Telephone inquiries can be made via +36 72 500 300 from Monday to Saturday from 10 AM to 6 PM.

Email inquiries are welcome at jegypenztar@pfz.hu.

cím

The Headquarters and Rehearsal Room of the Pannon Philharmonic

7622 Pécs,
Breuer Marcell sétány 4.

közönség

Public relations

Ms. Linda Potyondi
sales representative
potyondi.linda@pfz.hu 
+36 30 866 2310

info

Press relations

Ms. Csilla Szabó
communications manager
press@pfz.hu
+36 30 222 7992