Juraj Valčuha, Frank Peter Zimmermann

»A day without dancing is a day wasted!« That was Friedrich Nietzsche’s view – and so we are happy to gather under the choreographic direction of Juraj Valčuha to perform several playful, melodious dances of joy on our instruments. The Hungarian composer Béla Bartók found much of his inspiration for this in his cherished »folk song collecting expeditions«. He wrote his suite in 1923 in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the unification of Buda, Óbuda and Pest to form the new capital city of Budapest. The large-scale orchestral work, featuring a large percussion section, celesta and piano, contains a whole series of dances – some of them elegiac, some of them stomping, some of them light-hearted, culminating in a crowning finale of infectious joie de vivre. Together with Frank Peter Zimmermann, an esteemed expert, we will also tackle the technical demands of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. He seems to have written this composition in 1806 in a good frame of mind, as it was said of him that he was »cheerful, in the mood for joking, happy, lively, full of joie de vivre, witty and quite often also satirical«. And this disposition can be heard in many pasages – the finale, for example, is a folksy finale. Ravel’s magnificent work from 1920 develops an irresistible momentum. It takes one of the most famous dances and turns it on its head: at first we revel in the wonderful, almost dreamlike bliss of a Viennese waltz, but with the tremendous crescendos at the end we have to be careful not to step on each other’s musical toes. The 3/4 time becomes increasingly unhinged – but we look forward to this collective tumble in a piece that Ravel described as a »fantastic whirlwind from which no one can escape«.

Tickets: from 25.08.2025 10 a.m.