The Budafok Dohnanyi Orchestra's international star guest on this night will be Russian violinist Vadim Repin, a celebrated visitor to the world's greatest concert halls since he was 14 who remains to this day the youngest artist to ever win the Queen Elisabeth Competition held in Brussels. The orchestra has already played with him before, at the Cziffra Festival in February 2020, to resounding acclaim.
And since it is a Russian guest artist we will be welcoming to the stage, the BDO has picked out a selection of Russian musical masterpieces for its concert programme. To start with, the audience will get to hear the overture from the opera Dmitry Kabelevsky wrote to a novel by Romain Rolland. Then, the world-famous soloist will join the ensemble to perform Shostakovich's first violin concerto - in this piece of his, the composer broke with the three-movement format traditionally used for the genre and instead constructed it out of four movements as is typical of a symphony. Following the Nocturne, evoking nighttime moods and thoughts, comes a demonic Scherzo, which then gives way to a Passacaglia paying homage to the Baroque era. Finally, to close the concerto, is a whirlwind-like Burlesque. As the concluding work in the concert, we will have Tchaikovsky's popular Fourth Symphony, a genuine bravura piece for the conductor, about whose construction the composer left a detailed description. He refers to the introduction to the first movement as the core of the entire work, viewing it as the expression of "fate, that fateful force which prevents the impulse to happiness from attaining its goal." The second movement is one of gentle melancholy, with the composer expressing a spirit of sentimental weltschmerz out of the extended melody. Tchaikovsky left no specific substantive description of the Scherzo, even though it is one of the most exciting parts of the symphony: the string players play without using their bows, only plucking, and in the trio the woodwinds depict a humourous genre picture of a riotous folk revelry. The composer's own words offer a superb summary of the finalé and thus the entire concert: "Take joy in the joy of others - you will live longer!"

Presented by: Müpa Budapest, Budafok Dohnanyi Orchestra