On completing his ninth symphony, Gustav Mahler felt that he was finally over the mortal danger that the number 9 represented for so many in music. And yet, he was never able to finish his tenth symphony started in summer 1910. Even so, the Adagio of the opening movement is a massive and moving testimony and memento of the final artistic endeavours of a great composer. The symphonic work Laude by our contemporary Zoltán Jeney derives from the busy and arduous creative decade of this composer who is fearless in researching new trends and one of the culture heroes of the New Music Studio. Tonight we will hear the world premiere of a new version of this piece. In the wake of the work by Jeney, who just a few years ago Zoltán Kocsis praised as a master, the spotlight turns to Mihály Berecz, the young and hugely gifted pianist (who describes Kocsis as his role model), in a performance of Béla Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 1 under the guidance of András Keller. The work, created in the mid-1920s, reveals at least as much about the inspirational influence of Baroque music as it does about the degree of male bitterness accumulated in the soul of the composer.

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