Pannon Philharmonic

Conductor

Zoltán Peskó

Soloist

Alessandro Codeluppi

tenor

Lajos Geiger

bariton

Krisztián Cser

basso

Zita Váradi

sopran

Annamária Kovács

alt

MR Choir

Honvéd Male Choir and Budapest Studio Choir (Choir director: Kálmán Strausz)

About the Programme

Program:
Liszt: Christus - oratorio

for soloists, choir, orchestra, and organ

The Christus-oratorio, which had its premiere in 1873 in Weimar, is one of the greatest church music works of Franz Liszt.
Because its comprehensive characteristics showing Christi figure and life, the piece is often compared to Handel’ Messiah; one can find all of Liszt’s effort to the reformation of the Catholic oratorio in it. The choir parts with organ accompaniment represent the Cecilian ideas, the composer fond for simplicity and resurrection of the Palestrina-age ideas; the parts with the complete apparatus represent the monumental style of the masses with orchestra; the orchestral parts represent the style of the Lisztian symphonic poems.
In the closing orchestral movements of the first part, telling about the birth of Christ, we can hear a characteristically Hungarian sound, about which Liszt himself said: “If Rubens might have painted Flemish people in his Biblical pictures, I might have given to one of my Magi a rakish moustache. I am not ashamed because of that, at all.”