Mission
“Music should belong to everyone”
The greater part of Hungarian synagogues lie abandoned as a result of the Holocaust. The vast majority of Jewish communities were annihilated. Many of those who managed to return emigrated, moved elsewhere or no longer practised their religion. Synagogues lost their original function. Some were put to use for unworthy purposes – as warehouses or storage spaces, while others were simply left to ruin.
Each season, since 2014, the Budapest Festival Orchestra visits these beautiful buildings and organizes concerts to keep their memory alive. We fill synagogues that were laid bare by the Holocaust with life, music, and culture once again. Tunes, stories, and flavors can introduce local communities to the diversity and tolerance that used to be so typical of Hungary once upon a time.
“We have two audiences for our synagogue concerts. One is the music-loving people who fill Hungary’s mostly deserted rural synagogues. The other audience is the synagogue’s late Jewish community that was killed in the Holocaust and their children who were never born. We play for them as well as if they still lived in peace with their neighbors today.”
(Iván Fischer, Music Director of BFO)
Iván Fischer
Iván Fischer is the founder and Music Director of the Budapest Festival Orchestra, as well as the Honorary Conductor of the Konzerthaus and Konzerthausorchester Berlin. On top of that, he has gained a reputation as a composer, with his works being performed in the United States, the Netherlands, Belgium, Hungary, Germany and Austria. He has directed a number of highly successful opera productions.
As a guest conductor, he regularly conducts the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the Concertgebouw Orchestra, as well as working with some of the great US orchestras. He is an innovator, and has been bringing the Festival Orchestra’s concerts to abandoned synagogues since 2014.
In addition to his international prizes (including the Crystal Award, Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, the Royal Philharmonic Society Award, the Ovatie Prize and an honorary membership to the Royal Academy of Music) he has also received the Kossuth and Prima Primissima Awards. In 28 March, 2015 he received the Abu Dhabi Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement. In 2016, he won the Association of Music Critics of Argentina’s award for Best Foreign Conductor.
Budapest Festival Orchestra
Founded in 1983 the Budapest Festival Orchestra has established itself as one of the ten leading orchestras of the world. It is loved by audiences and praised by international critics for its intensive and emotionally gripping performances. Iván Fischer, as Music Director, has been directing the artistic work of the BFO for more than thirty years now. The Budapest Festival Orchestra has maintained its experimental spirit, shaping and reshaping orchestral work in the name of constant renewal.
The Budapest Festival Orchestra regularly performs in Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Konzerthaus Wien, Concertgebouw Amsterdam or Royal Albert Hall London. As a special guest the BFO is regularly invited to the Lucerne, Edinburgh and San Sebastian Festivals and to play at the BBC Proms and the Salzburger Festspiele. The BFO is also a returning guest to New York’s prestigious Mostly Mozart Festival. The BFO has won two Gramophone Awards, one of the most signi cant honours of the classical record industry and often referred to as the Oscars of classical music. The BFO was a Grammy award nominee in 2013 for its recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 and received the Dutch Music Award in 2006 and in 2008. In 2014, the recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 received wide acclaim, being awarded both the Diapason d’Or and Italy’s Toblacher Komponierhäuschen for Best Mahler Recording.
