Iván Fischer & the BFO Return to Heroes' Square – A free concert for young and old

Heroes’ Square is an iconic venue for us. Over the years, the Budapest Festival Orchestra has given many memorable concerts here for the people of Budapest, from our “Waltz Concert” and the “With the Gypsies” concert to the “Dancing on the Square” concerts, celebrating tolerance and inclusion. This September, our newly formed Children’s Choir will take center stage, making its public debut with a radiant, summery work by Arvo Pärt. The concert promises a memorable experience for children and the young at heart alike: alongside Prokofiev’s Cinderella Suite, Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony will fill Heroes’ Square with music. We warmly invite the whole family to join us.

The evening opens with Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. Although it is known as “unfinished”, the Eighth Symphony forms a complete artistic whole through its two magnificent, completed movements. Schubert began composing the work in 1822, at the height of his creative powers, but was forced to abandon it after the appearance of the first symptoms of the illness that would ultimately claim his life. The symphony was not premiered until nearly forty years after the composer’s death, but it has become one of the most performed work in classical music.

The BFO’s newly established Children’s Choir will make its debut before an audience of thousands with Arvo Pärt’s Summer Waltz, performed in the composer’s original Estonian. This cheerful, dance-like work, evoking the most beautiful face of summer, was originally written in 1959 as incidental music for Salme Lauren’s play Adventure in the Forest. Listening to the children, we find ourselves in a flower-filled meadow, alive with dragonflies, bees, crickets and fireflies. Summer Waltz forms part of Pärt’s cycle Five Children’s Songs and was also included in the 2015 collection Songs from Childhood. The composer dedicated both collections to his mother.

As a tribute to Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev created the ballet Cinderella, from which he later compiled three orchestral suites. Glass slippers, a pumpkin coach and the dwarfs emerging from the clock as midnight strikes all come to life, even though Prokofiev composed Cinderella during the darkest years of the Second World War, between 1940 and 1944. The ballet was not premiered until after the war, in Moscow in 1945. The orchestral suites are far more than simple selections from the ballet score. Prokofiev revised, expanded and reordered the music to create self-contained concert works. The first two suites draw almost exclusively on the music of the first two acts, ending with the close of the ball, while in the third suite the Prince finally succeeds in finding Cinderella.