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

István Várdai

cello

István Várdai was born in 1985 in Pécs. In 1997 he was admitted to the class of exceptional talented children of Franz Liszt Music Academy. After his university studies in Budapest and Vienna, he continued them at the Academy of… More

About the Programme

There are exiting juvenile art works; there are great, conclusive creations; and there are works, not even the most well-known ones, with their most important feature that they almost radiate the creative energy of their composers. This is true for Elgar's pompous Triumphal March and for the in Hungary not so renowned 20th-century British composer, William Walton's Cello Concerto as well as for Rimsky-Korsakov enchanting, wonderfully orchestrated Scheherazade. Nobody can be a prophet in his own land, says the proverb: for the artist, this is true so far that we are used to it that our best ones are almost never home with us. István Várdai is a welt-star in the true meaning of the word, in his prime – the concert halls are all after him; he spends more time on airplanes than at home, spreading the fame of Hungarian musicians all over the world. And since December, he plays a real rarity, a Stradivarius cello from 1673, which was the instrument of Jacqueline du Pré and Lynn Harrell before. There are only 65 Stadivarius cello in the world; last time, János Starker had one in his hand.

An audience member of István Várdai’s concert wrote: “The Wednesday concert took me under it’s charm but no more than at other times. But this evening... there was a moment when I sank so deep into music that I completely lost my sense of time and space (that’s what psychologists call flow, isn’t?).”  (forum.index.hu)