Vengerov will appear at the Budapest Spring Festival for the third time, marketing director Andrea Koch said. An audience favourite, Vengerov will play works by Beethoven, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, Koch said.
Kennedy will be performing in Hungary for the first time. The performance has generated "tremendous excitement", Koch said, noting that tickets are already sold out. Kennedy will play material from his latest jazz album at the concert.
Only a few tickets are left for the Monte Carlo Ballet's production of "Romeo and Juliet". The ballet, performing at the Budapest Spring Festival for the first time, will stage the production four times in three days.
Another sold-out performance on the programme is a concert by the UK's Philharmonia Orchestra, under the baton of the renowned Riccardo Muti. The orchestra will perform works by Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Liszt.
Other highlights on the classical music programme include performances by Portugal's Gulbenkian Orchestra and Brazil's Sao Paulo Symphonics. The later will perform Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 2 with soloist Dezső Ránki.
To mark the 40th anniversary of Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály's death, Germany's Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie will perform Dances of Galánta with the pianist Maria Joao Pires.
On the jazz programme will be Grammy Award-winning saxophonist Branford Marsalis, who is returning to Hungary.
The Budapest Spring Festival has long served as a venue for never-before-seen performances. Among this year's unique offerings will be a performance by the Spanish dancer Maria Serrano and the Hungarian cimbalom player Kálmán Balogh.
A concert by the MÁV Symphonic Orchestra conducted by Tamás Pál will pay tribute to the "undeservedly forgotten" three-time Oscar winner Hungarian composer Miklós Rózsa who died in 1955. In addition to his Concerto for Viola, his famous film scores will be on the programme, including scores for Hitchcock's "Spellbound," George Cukor's "Othello" and William Wyler's "Ben Hur."
On the festival's theatre programme will be a performance in French by the Théatre Vidy-Lausanne of "Eraritjaritjaka - Museum of Phrases", a rendering of Elias Canetti's writings by Heiner Goebbels.
The 27th Budapest Spring Festival will include 128 events at 48 venues with more than 3,500 performers on March 16-April 1. The festival has a budget of about HUF 1.4 billion, 38 percent of which comes from the state.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
To see the full programme of the festival visit http://festivalcity.hu/btf2007/?PHPSESSID=ba9b43cd8f91ed336d779399fe1f6492.
