Community building is extremely important to the Budapest Festival Orchestra. Over the past thirty-something years the orchestra and their audience have grown into a huge, musicloving family which keeps on growing and sets out every year on a journey of musical exploration.

The aim of our Community Weeks is to help this family grow, to rebuild the ties between existing communities and forge new ones through the power of music. There are many people in this country who are open to music, but distance and a lack of time prevent them from enjoying the BFO’s performances. We help them by bringing our free concerts to local churches. Our musicians are constantly on the lookout for new challenges, beyond the spectrum of orchestral performances.

In 2011 we founded our baroque ensemble, which plays on authentic period instruments. Their performances play a key role in both our regular season and our community work. And what could be more fitting in baroque music than the spirituality, atmosphere and acoustics of a church? We started our church concert series in the summer of 2014, since when we have visited Catholic, Calvinist and Lutheran communities. The first of these concerts was at the Lutheran church in Budapest’s Deák square, and our subsequent nationwide tour has taken us from Pannonhalma to Soltvadkert to Sellye, and evento the tiny Transylvanian village of Kaplony.

We based the first year and a half of our series around Bach’s cantatas, but we’re now broadening our repertoire with other baroque composers and different genres. The Festival Orchestra is glad to be preserving this musical tradition, and would be delighted to share it with anyone open to it.