Barnabás Kelemen:

At the age of 11 he passed into the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music where he received his diploma in 2001. He has participated in master classes with Ferenc Rados, Isaac Stern, György Kurtág, Lorand Fenyves, Dénes Zsigmondy, György Pauk and Thomas Zehetmair. In addition to winning prizes at the 1997 Szigeti Competition, the 1999 Mozart Competition in Salzburg and the 2001 Queen Elisabeth Competition in 2002, he received the Gold Medal at the 2002 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis and six of the eight special prizes. He has appeared with Maazel, Marriner, Russel-Davies, Kocsis, Vásáry, Perényi, Isserlis, Ránki and Eötvös. He has released 11 solo recordings (Hungaroton, BMC, and Naxos). He performs in all significant concert halls and festivals of the world: Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Wigmore Hall in London, Carnegie Hall in New York, at the festivals of Jerusalem, Lockenhaus, Ittingen, Kuhmo and Menton. Since 2005 he has been teaching at the Liszt Music Academy in Budapest and is also guest professor at Indiana University. He performs on the 1742 Ex-Dénes Kovács Guarneri del Gesú violin, which he received from the State of Hungary.

About the pieces:

Out of the six Brandenburg Concerti composed by Bach to Christian Ludwig, margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt, the third one is the shortest but played the most frequently. It has two movements and only two chords instead of the slow movement. Even if it is short the two chords mean the necessary change in the atmosphere between the two virtuoso movements. The concerto is played only a string orchestra. Bach divided the violins, violas and cellos into three member groups accompanied by the usual basso continuo. (Last BFO performance 5 December, 2006, Budapest, BFO Rehearsal Hall, leader Eszter Bedõ Lesták)

Tchaikovsky composed his only serenade in 1880. He wrote of the work to his patroness, Madame von Meck: “The first movement is my homage to Mozart, an imitation of his style, and I should be delighted if I thought I had even approached my model. Do not laugh, my dear, when I protect the interests of my new-born so jealously. Perhaps my fatherly feelings are so strong because this is my newest work.” The composer presented the four-movement Serenade for Strings in 1888-89, in all the main cities in Germany. It was a huge success, and we know from Tchaikovsky’s letters that audiences were captivated most by the waltz section. (Last BFO performance 9 April, 2006, BFO Rehearsal Hall, concert master Eszter Lesták Bedõ)

The BVW Concerto No. 1052 now exists only as a harpsichord concerto but the figurations of the solo instrument make probable that it is a transcription of a violin concerto. For a long time it was a doubt that the original piece was written by Bach but this was a fiction: there was no other composer in the first part of the 18th century who could create such a brilliant solo piece of the genre. The thick, polyphone structure of the phrases, the metrical, even pulses along the rhythm, the passacaglia-form of the wonderful slow movement are all to prove Bach as the composer, like the fact that the music of the first two movements were built into his cantatas. (Last BFO performance as Piano Concerto on 29 April, 1995, Budapest, Academy of Music, soloist András Schiff, conductor Ivan Fischer. In Violin Concerto version first BFO performance)

Bartók wrote his Divertimento in 1939, in response to a commission from the Basel Chamber Orchestra; the ensemble premiered it in 1940, with Paul Sacher conducting. In this work Bartók drew heavily on the classical and pre-classical traditions of the genre, with its contrast between the first and last ‘tutti’ and ‘soli’ movements, the important role of dance rhythms in the recruiting music of the opening movement, and the Hungarian-style dance paraphrases of the final movement. The composition departs significantly from the traditions of the genre in other respects, however. Formal signs of this are the use of the three-movement structure of the baroque/classical concerto in contrast to the many movements associated with the divertimento, or the second movement, which breaks with the carefree qualities of the divertimento to evoke dark, lonely visions in the shocking tone of Bartókian ‘Night Music’. (Last BFO performance 15 December, 2007, Budapest, Franz Liszt Academy of Music, Budapest, leader Violetta Eckhardt)