Night of Museums at the Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum

As in past years we offered our guests a variety of programs that attracted more than 650 visitors, a significant increase compared to last year. People were not only interested in seeing Liszt’s apartment with his furniture, instruments and personal belongings, the concert hall was packed during all our performances. One of our prominent events was the guided tour, held by Julia Fedoszov, who talked about Liszt’s instruments, followed by a unique performance that happens only once a year: László Borbély played a few Liszt pieces on the instruments. The visitors could hear the two Chickering concert pianos, the Bösendorfer-piano, the harmonium by Mason&Hamlin and the glass piano by Bachmann.

Our guest could test their classical music knowledge while listening to a presentation combined with a quiz conducted by the director of the museum, Zsuzsanna Domokos. There were also guided tours: Krisztina Halász showed the guests around the museum in Hungarian while Katalin Avar in English. Between the guided tours there were magnificent concerts and fanfare music was played by Tamás Kovács from the balcony.

We had three wonderful concerts: the first one a solo concert of a young and talented pianist Ádám Szokolay, who played pieces by Liszt, Debussy and Bartók and was greeted with standing ovation by the audience.

The second concert was a captivating performance of Liszt-compositions by the magnificent pianist professor and teacher at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music, László Borbély.

The third concert was Gergely Bogányi pianist and Soma Balázs-Piri, the 16 year-old winner of the classical music competition Virtuózok. They brought a combination of solo and chamber music pieces.

The concerts were followed by a performance of the pianist-actress duo Valéria Somlai and Mara Kékkovács, who took us on an imaginary tour by reading and playing poems and songs about love. We heard excerpts from Liszt, Kosztolányi, García Lorca, Rachmaninoff, Shakespeare, Debussy, Goethe, Verlaine and Gershwin.

It was a truly exciting evening with elevating performances. Thank you for coming and participating in our programs. We look forward to seeing you next year!