Iván Fischer made his own dream come true when he founded the Budapest Festival Orchestra in 1983 together with Zoltán Kocsis.

 

Thanks to its innovative approach to music and the uncompromising dedication of its musicians, the BFO has become the youngest ensemble to join the world’s top ten symphony orchestras. In addition to Budapest, the orchestra regularly performs in some of the most important concert venues of the international music scene and is also present on international streaming platforms.

 

Since its inception, the BFO has been recognized by Gramophone, the prestigious British musical periodical, three times: in 1998 and 2007, the magazine’s professional panel of judges awarded the BFO the prize for the best recording, while in 2022, thanks to audience votes, it was named Orchestra of the Year. The BFO’s most considerable successes are connected to Mahler: their recording of Symphony No. 1 was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2013.

 

• Mozart : Adagio and Fugue c minor K 546 
• Schubert: g minor String Quartet D 173 

Intermission

• Dvorak : F major “American”String Quartet Op 96

 

As an academy student, Tímea Iván won the national Károly Flesch Violin Competition, the Hungarian Radio National Violin Competition and the Leó Weiner Chamber Music Competition. She is one of the founding members of the Festival Orchestra.

 

She completed her postgraduate studies under Sándor Végh in the Salzburg Mozarteum, after which she became Végh’s assistant professor. Between 1986 and 2001 she was the principal violinist, leader, artistic director and soloist of the Salzburg Camerata Academica, and regularly performed all over the world. Since 2002 she’s been the principal violinist of the Festival Orchestra, as well as being the principal guest violinist of several orchestras abroad (the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, the Luxembourg Philharmonic and the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Philharmonic Orchestra).

 

 

Born in Budapest in 1974, Ágnes Bíró graduated from Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music under Eszter Perényi in 1997. In 1993 she won first prize and a special award for best performance in a contemporary work at the Zathureczky Violin Competition, and at the same competition in 1994 she won third prize and a special award. Since 1994 she has been a member of the Budapest Festival Orchestra’s violin section and won the orchestra's Sándor Végh Competition in 2005. She's a regular performer of the BFO's chamber music and Baroque productions and also often participates in other prestigious musical events in Budapest.

 

 

He graduated in 1994 at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest, from the classes of György Konrád (viola), and György Kurtág and Ferenc Rados (chamber music). He is the member of the Budapest Festival Orchestra since 1992.

 

 

Born into a musical family in Transylvania in 1963, Péter Szabó studied at the Music Academy in Cluj-Napoca, and later at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest where his teachers included László Mező, Ferenc Rados and György Kurtág.

 

He has won prizes at several competitions including the Romanian National, the Markneukirchen International Instrumental Competition and the Cântarea României Festival, and has been decorated by the International Musicology Society in Geneva. He has been given both the Hungarian Classical Award and the prize for Best Hungarian Classical Performer of the Year by Gramofon Magazine.

 

As a member of the World Orchestra for Peace, he received the prestigious title of ‘UNESCO Artist for Peace’. In recognition of his activities as a musician and performing artist, he was awarded the Liszt Prize, the highest musical award of the Hungarian state. He won the Lajtha Award for his outstanding interpretation of László Lajtha’s compositions.