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Minister of Education and Culture István Hiller and Budapest Mahler Festival artistic director Iván Fischer will officially open the festival on Sunday, September 9. Marina Mahler, the granddaughter of the composer, will be present at the ceremony.
On the same day, an exhibition of the first recordings of Mahler's works from the collection of Péter Fülöp will open at the Palace of Arts.
The Budapest Festival Orchestra will perform four times during the festival. On September 9, 11 and 13, they will play Mahler's tone poem Totenfeier and his 4th Symphony. Iván Fischer will conduct and the world famous Swede Soprano Miah Persson will be the soloist.
On September 12, the orchestra will perform the premiere of an "opera-novella" written especially for the Budapest Mahler Festival by the Hungarian composer János Vajda and based on a text by the Czech writer Karl apek. The tenor Attila Fekete will be the soloist for the performance. Also on the evening's programme will be the Austrian Viktor Ullmann's opera The Emperor of Atlantis, or The Refusal of Death. The composer wrote the piece in the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp, before he was sent to his death in Auschwitz. The production will be directed by Andor Lukáts and feature Levente Molnár (baritone), Antal Cseh (bass), Noémi Kiss (soprano), Viktória Mester (mezzo-soprano), Zoltán Megyesi (tenor) and Géza Gábor (bass).
On September 16, the American baritone Thomas Hampson will sing songs by Mahler as well as Liszt.
Hungarian Radio will broadcast several thematic programmes on Mahler during the festival, and a special album on Mahler, in Hungarian and English, will be published.
Source: Fidelio
