Marking the 70th anniversary of the deportation of Hungarian Jews, as part of the official program series within the frames of the Holocaust Memorial Year declared by the Government of Hungary, Leon Botstein will conduct at the Liszt Academy on the 11th of May, 7:00 PM.

At the concert titled ‘In the Valley of Shadow’, pieces will be performed written by Jewish composers who either died young or fled into exile at World War II and a work neglected long for decades of Ernő Dohnányi, who died abroad too: the Szeged Mass.

The private performance organized by the Concert Centre of the Liszt Academy aims to show that this dark chapter of history caused an irreplaceable loss to Hungarian culture. The concert program which encompasses works of Ödön Pártos, who finished his career in Israel; László Weiner, who deceased during forced labour at the Ukrainian front; László Gyopár, who became a Catholic convert and claimed a Latin mass his magnum opus; Mihály Nádor, who suffered martyrdom at an unknown location in July 1944; and Ernő Dohnányi, who immigrated to America being both accused with “Jewish friendship” and “Nazi collaboration”, has been a hit already when performed during the Spring of 2013 at Carnegie Hall under the name ‘Hungary Torn’.

The performance will be shown on domestic grounds after a year as part of the Hungarian Holocaust Memorial Year, having the rector and professor of Bard College, Leon Botstein as conductor, just the way it was in New York. Educated at Chicago and Harvard, during his career the conductor was the musical director both of the American Symphony Orchestra and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra and as a guest conductor, he headed such ensembles as the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Concerto Budapest, the Budapest Festival Orchestra or the Philharmonia Orchestra. The musicologist received numerous awards and being recognized as a distinguished conductor; among the American Academy of Arts and Sciences he is a member of several cultural bodies, and he publishes in major journals from the New York Times to the Musical Quarterly.

The programme of the evening was compiled on the advocate of Botstein by Péter Bársony, Liszt Prize-laureate violist and a professor of Liszt University with the aid of Kossuth Prize-winning violinist Barnabás Kelemen, whom with he had contributed to the American performance as well. They will be the soloists of the concert in Budapest on 11 May, with the participation of Zita Váradi (soprano), Szilvia Vörös (mezzo-soprano), Péter Balczó (tenor), Gábor Bretz (bass) and Zoltán Lengyel (organ).

(Ministry of Public Administration and Justice)