Pannon Philharmonic

Conductor

Tibor Bogányi

In 2017/2018, he is spending his seventh season as chief conductor of the Pannon Philharmonic.

Tibor Bogányi is of Hungarian descent and is regarded as the most interesting and talented member of the generation of Finnish conductors. At the age of 28 he was appointed Chief Conductor of… More

Soloist

Andrei Gavrilov

piano

Andrei Gavrilov was born in Moscow in 1955 in the artistic family.  His father Vladimir Gavrilov was a great painter, mother pupil of Henrich Neuhaus was his first teacher. He graduated from central music school in Moscow in 1973 where… More

About the Programme

The Paris of the early 20th century was fancy for oriental, exotic cultures, especially for the intellectual products of the tsarist Russia. This explains the popularity of the Russian Ballet in Paris, whom we ought to thank for creating a lot of new work. Many of these were written by Russians, but there were examples of co-operation with local composers. Paul Dukas’s ballet, La Peri, which tells the story of the Iranian magician Iskender searching the flower of immortality, was written on their commission. In the light of this Russian cultural invasion, it is not a coincidence that also Sergei Prokofiev chose Paris as his residence, for a while although he had successes at home, too: for example, he won Anton Rubinstein Prize with his Piano Concerto No1, shortly before the outbreak of World War I, in which his colleague, Paul Wittgenstein lost his right hand. However, this did not mean the end of the Austrian pianist's career: he just ordered some new pieces written for left-hand only - for example, from Maurice Ravel. In the Left Hand Piano Concerto one can hear the Gregorian Dies Irae melody, which is a major component of Camille Saint-Saëns's Danse Macabre, as well.