Commissioned by the Dresden Music Festival, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, this monumental, six-part Buddha Passion was written in 2018. The piece has a Chinese and Sanskrit libretto, and employs solo singers, a choir and an orchestra. It was first performed in Dresden by the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and the Internationale Chorakademie Lübeck.
Before he set pen to paper, world-famous, Oscar and Grammy award winning composer Tan Dun spent some time at the Mogao Caves (Caves of the Thousand Buddhas), a UNESCO World Heritage site in Western China. The hundreds of temples and meditation grottoes bear witness to a thousand years of Buddhist art. The famed reclining Buddha, a 15-metre long sculpture, can be found in cave 158. The libretto was directly inspired by the murals around the statue, as well as by the ancient writings and musical notations that Tan Dun studied on location, at the Dunhuang Library Cave.

Staged concert with one interval, in Mandarin and Sanskrit, with English and Hungarian surtitles.

Tickets & more information available on Bartók Spring's website.