The excellent French conductor was music director of the Lyon Opera from 1998 to 2000 and of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Liege from 2001 to 2006. He has been artistic director of the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York since 2002. He is a regular guest at leading music festivals (Spoleto, BBC Proms, Salzburg, Vienna, Glyndebourne) and opera houses (Covent Garden, Chicago, Dresden, Opera Bastille, Vienna State Opera). He received the "opera conductor of the year" award from the British Royal Philharmonic Society along with Simon Rattle for a production of Fidelio in Glyndebourne in 2001. In the 2009/2010 season he made his debut at the Scala of Milan (Don Giovanni) and the Opera Comique in Paris (Messager: Fortunio). He also conducted at the Metropolitan Opera in New York (Thomas: Hamlet) and at the Aix-en-Provence Festival (Don Giovanni). He often works along with early music ensembles (Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Concerto Cologne, Orchestra des Champs-Elysées). Langrée conducts the Budapest Festival Orchestra for the first time.

Anett Jóföldi:

She started to learn music in the Hungarian town of Kecskemét, as a student of Ákos Dratsay. Winner at tzhe age of 15 of a national flute competition, in 1994 she won a scholarship to the Mozart Academy, and was a student of Aurele Nicolet. Between 1993 she was flautist of the Weiner-Szász Chamber Orchestra, between 1994 and 1996 she was on the staff of the Conservatory of Székesfehérvár. In 1996 she obtained her diploma at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music under Henrik Prõhle (flute) and György Kurtág (chamber music). She has played in the Budapest Festival Orchestra since 1996, and has been a full member since 1999. In 2006 and 2009 she was one of the winners of the Sándor Végh Competition of BFO musicians.

Ágnes Polónyi:

She obtained her diploma at the Liszt Academy in 2000 as a student of Andrea Vígh. She participated in master classes of Ion Ovan Roncea, Milda Agazarjan, Sioned Williams and Anna Lelkes. An active participant in modern music ensembles (UMZE, Intermoduláció, EAR, Componensemble), she has appeared as soloist and chamber musician at the Budapest Spring and Autumn Festivals, at the Liszt Academy, on Hungarian Radio, as well as in several music centres in Hungary and abroad. In 2005 she gave a solo recital at the International Harp Festival at Gödöllõ. In 2005 she was recepient of the Annie Fisher Scholarship. She has been a regular participant in different BFO productions since 2006 and was winner of the orchestra's Sándor Végh Competition in 2009.

About the pieces:

La clemenza di Tito (The Clemency of Titus), was written on the request of the Czech orders in 1791. The opera, which was composed in eighteen days, has a sonata form overture calling back the elation and magnificent pathos of the ‘opera seria’. (Last BFO performance March 2, 1997, Academy of Music, Budapest, conductor Zoltán Kocsis)

In the spring of 1778, when Mozart was in Paris, his patron Baron Grimm pled his cause with the Duke of Guines and procured that the Duke saw the young musician. Mozart was fascinated – as he wrote in his letter – about how beautifully the Duke played the flute and his daughter the harp. Mozart received two assignments from the Duke: to teach his daughter composition (“she is lazy and dull” –said the outspoken composer after the first lessons) and to write a new piece for him and his daughter. The Concerto for Flute, Harp, and Orchestra in C major (which is Mozart only composition on harp) is an excellent example of the light and elegant social music. The piece is essentially in the form of a Sinfonia Concertante, which was extremely popular in Paris at the time. The final movement is very interesting, its theme he finalized in the romance of “The Little Night Music”. (Last BFO Performance June 11, 1994, Rehearsal Hall of the BFO, Budapest; soloists Gabriella Pivon and Deborah Sipkai, conductor Zoltán Kocsis)

Schumann's life and work was decisively influenced by his love for - and later marriage to - his piano teacher Friedrich Wieck's daughter Clara, who was to remain his self-sacrificing partner until her death. Her father did everything in his power to prevent his daughter from marrying Schumann (who was nine years her senior), even resorting to the courts. But it was all in vain - the marriage was solemnised in 1840. The first drafts of the Symphony in D minor, whose four movements flow into one unbroken whole, were committed to paper in Leipzig in the initial months of Schumann's marriage, and named after Clara. It was performed as part of a composers' evening jointly presented with Liszt in December 1841, but it received little attention alongside the resounding success of the latter's compositions. Schumann waited ten years before turning to the work again in 1851. The reworked piece with new instrumentation was premièred in Düsseldorf in December 1851, under the composer's baton. (Last BFO performance 29 November, 2003, Budapest, Franz Liszt Music Academy, conductor Carlo Rizzi)