Conductor András Keller on Concerto Budapest's "The Day of Listening"

Led by András Keller, the contemporary music event will involve six concerts on November 5, 2023 — and be streamed LIVE on The Violin Channel

The Concerto Budapest Symphony Orchestra is presenting its fifth annual Day of Listening Festival, which showcases almost 30 works, squeezed into six concerts on just one day.

Led by the orchestra’s music director and chief conductor András Keller, the event was established in 2015 in order to break down boundaries between both performers and audiences as well as classical and contemporary music.

Each concert will be streamed live here on The Violin Channel on November 5, 2023, at 6 AM, 8 AM, 9:30 AM, 11 AM, 12:30 PM, and 2 PM (ET) — live from the Budapest Music Center.

The Violin Channel recently sat down with conductor Andras Keller, to learn more about this year's event.

 

Tell us about the Day of Listening. What is its mission?

‘The Day of Listening’ means several things, in Hungarian as well as in other languages. It implies both growing quiet and paying attention. In both senses, it points to the same thing: Concerto Budapest’s principal objective on this day each year is to celebrate contemporary art.

 

When and where do the concerts take place? Can you tell us more about the different venues?

The concerts take place at two different venues of BMC, the 300-seat Concert Hall and the state-of-art Opus Jazz Club. Budapest Music Center was founded in 1996 to present and coordinate contemporary Hungarian music. The new headquarters opened in 2013 to serve the same goal under high-quality circumstances.

 

You feature a large selection of new music, that you pair with older pieces. How does this curation process take place?

What we have done is link the various works in a unique way to create a one-of-a-kind musical fabric, in which their unique characteristics emerges only on the spot, as they interact with each other in unpredictable ways.  If we play a work by Péter Eötvös immediately after one by Shostakovich, the two will surely have something to say to each other, a connection that will only be revealed right there at that moment.

 

What can we expect to hear and experience this year?

This year’s festival features 28 musical works, seven world premieres, and one Hungarian premiere, all presented by an endless list of artists and ensembles, squeezed into six concerts on one single day. On this year’s Day of Listening, we will hear the voices of composers Péter Eötvös, Gábor Csalog, György Ligeti, Zoltán Jeney, Paul Hindemith and Richard Strauss, to mention just a few. The artists performing their works will include Maxim Rysanov, Zoltán Fejérvári, Orsolya Kaczander, Csaba Klenyán, Miranda Liu and the Keller Quartet, along with many other outstandingly talented figures from the contemporary music world.

 

Many of this year’s events are in honor of Zoltán Gál, with the last one in memory of the victims of the war and terrorism. Can you expand on these dedications?

Zoltán Gál, the founder and creator of the world-famous Keller Quartet, was an extremely talented Hungarian violist. As a student of György Kurtág, he was a dedicated representative of contemporary music. Composers dedicated over a hundred works to our quartet, of which we have only had the opportunity to present a limited selection. Zoltán Gál passed away in April this year, and this day is a tribute to him.

The last concert is dedicated to the memory of the victims of war and terrorism. This is especially important for me because I feel that in today's world, war and terrorism are becoming more and more pervasive and we musicians have a duty to make our voices heard. Our tool is music, which is a universal language that everyone understands and can bring reconciliation to the whole world. I am convinced that if people listened to more classical music, there would not be so much violence on earth.

 

In your opinion, why is contemporary music so important to share with audiences?

My aim in creating the Day of Listening was for people to first hear an unfamiliar piece of music, and then develop an opinion about it afterwards. In the Internet age, we have access to so much information that we often form opinions about things before actually encountering them. So I thought: first, let’s settle down quietly, listen to music together, listen to each other, listen to what this language tells us about the world we live in and how it reflects on the world of the past, journey through the ages together and then share this experience with each other.

Ever since I was 16 years old, I have been a student of György Kurtág’s, and it was chiefly from him that I learned that when we play music, the notes we play constitute the most important stories in our lives. This means that we must be able to put everything we have into every sound we produce in order to allow them to come to life, and in so doing (hopefully) convey the composer’s message along with our own.
If we play contemporary music with this same sense of humility and faith, perhaps even unusual and unfamiliar sounds can find their way to the listeners’ hearts.