Pannon Philharmonic

The orchestra continues its series for adults in Pécs and also at the Palace of Arts in the capital. There is a novelty in Budapest, the so-called EXTRA season ticket, in which frame trip to Pécs, a visit to the Zsolnay Quarter is also included for the Budapest subscribers. Season tickets are still available for the Pannonicum series, which starts at 6.00pm on Saturdays at the Kodály Centre, and for the Musica Sacra series at the Cathedral of Pécs.

"Everything that has been played in Pécs gets a new interpretation in this hall. We do not just give concerts but  do revitalise the concepts "- summed up chief conductor Tibor Boganyi the importance of the works the orchestra is playing in this season.

At the concerts, the orchestra can greet some exceptional guest artists: at the first time ever steps onto the stage of the people of Pécs a conductor lady in the person of Eva Ollikainen; there will be heard such a rarely performed work as Nikolai Tchaikin’s Accordion Concerto performed by Rade Mijatović; in addition to that: the greatest pianists are going to play in Pécs and also in Budapest: Péter Frankl, Gergely Bogányi, Fazil Say, Dezső Ránki will be the guests of the orchestra’s "Four Faces of the Piano" series. The strings masters will be represented by Kristóf Baráti and Petteri Iivonen violinist, István Várdai and Jérôme Pernoo cellist, but you won’t miss the brass soloist neither: in October, with the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra comes Radovan Cavallin clarinetist; in November, with the Miskolc Symphony Orchestra, Kornél Fekete-Kovács is playing the flugelhorn; in May, Csaba Bencze is playing Bourgeois’s Trombone Concerto. The musicians of the orchestra, Balázs Bujtor concert master is going to perform as a soloist twice.

The program includes a number of premieres, and works you've never heard in Pécs: Levente Gyöngyösi’s Ouvertura Sopianaensis, written as a commission for the orchestra, will be premiered in September. The composer, Levente Gyöngyösi, who was also present at the orchestra’s season opening press conference, praised the Kodály Centre as a wonderful space of possibilities, that is „personal, friendly, and sounds clean but  gigantic at the same time."

There will be a premiere of a work of Alexander Radvilovich in October;  the European premiere of the American composer Primous Fountain’s Symphony No.4 will take place in early November; and then the premiere of Kornél Fekete-Kovács’s double concerto for violin and flugelhorn will at the end of November. In March, Kálmán Oláh’s composer evening, where the Pannon Philharmonic together with the Kalmán Oláh Trio, Kristóf Bacsó, and András Dés will play jazz symphonic works, comes with surprises. The program, of course, can be left without the film music concert in October, with music of the Casablanca, the Batman, the Spiderman and the Captain of the Tenkes.

At co-production performances will perform Adrien Szerekes and Tímea Vermes; together with the Palace of Arts and the Neue Oper Wien ensemble will be performed György Ligeti's opera Le Grand Macabre; and in February, you can hear for the first time the concert version of Gounod's opera Romeo and Juliet as a co-production with the National Theatre of Pécs, at the Kodály Centre. The theatre premiere will take place in April.

The orchestra celebrates Zoltán Kocsis’s 60th birthday. The orchestra's first permanent guest conductor steps onto stage of the Pécs audience as a soloist of an orchestral concerto in September, as a conductor in October, and as a soloist on his own in December.

At the adult concerts, there will be an important technical change: because of the transport difficulties, the weekday concerts at the Kodály Centre will now start at 7.00pm.