The Budapest Festival Orchestra opens the 35th Bologna Festival. On Tuesday, 15 March, at the Teatro Manzoni, the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the women’s choir of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and the mezzosoprano Gerhild Romberger, conducted by Iván Fischer, present for the first time at the Bologna Festival, Mahler's Third Symphony. An intense interpretation by Iván Fischer, Music Director and founder of the distinguished Hungarian ensemble, today counted among the best European orchestras. This Mahler masterpiece requires, as well as a soloist and a women’s chorus, a children's choir: the children's choir of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna completes the cast of this inaugural concert. Of Mahler’s symphonies, the Third is, along with the Eighth, hardly ever performed, not least because of the huge ensemble. Mahler said: “My Symphony will be something that the world hasn't heard yet.” Written in 1896, the masterpiece represents a cosmic immersion in the world of nature. Iván Fischer has been the Music Director of the Budapest Festival Orchestra for 30 years. The Hungarian maestro studied in Vienna under Hans Swarowski, the teacher of Abbado, Mehta and Sinopoli, and he faithfully follows Central European interpretive thinking.

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