Students from the academy's folk and jazz departments started the performance - part of the centre's Jeudi's, or Thursdays, series, which seeks a musical accompaniment to works of contemporary and modern art in the museum on the upper floors - by mixing with the crowd in the lobby as programmes were handed out to the arriving visitors. The audience found themselves part of the performance, until the event's organizer, Sára Stenczer, a Hungarian living in Paris, clapped her hands at seven o'clock.
Ferenc Zimber and Márton Kovács
At this point, the saxophonist Miklós Borbély paraded about and the cimbalom player Ferenc Zimber joined two double bassists. Flutes, then folk singers, joined in, creating a sound like an orchestra tuning before a performance. The musicians, and the crowd, moved upstairs.
The drum duo of Bendegúz Varga and János Ávéd played in front of a Jackson Pollock and the singer Klára Hajdu and guitarist Márton Fenyvesi performed a rhapsodic dialogue in front of a painting by Simon Hantai.
The performances, a kind of audible guide to specific works of art, were short and carefully timed. Five or six took place simultaneously.
Zsolt Fekete and Gábor Subicz
János Ávéd and Miklós Borbély performed a tenor and alto saxophone duet in front of a large Kandinsky. In the Agam room, Veronika Harcsa sang and danced, inspired by the futuristic designs that surrounded her. A performance of ballads by Mária Majda Guessous, Marietta Szűcs and Éva Takács in the same room had an entirely different effect.
Dezső Oláh and Péter Pintér played a wild four-hand arrangement on the piano in a corridor hung with cover art from the avant-garde art journal Der Sturm.
For the finale of the performance, the audience took the baton. The musicians were divided into sections with numbers, and the numbers were distributed on placards to members of the audience. When the audience members raised their placards, the musicians would play. The idea worked well with the museum-goers and earned the musicians a standing ovation.
Author: Kornél Zipernovszky / Photo: Károly Friedrich
