Amikor én halott voltam

The dice and the stopwatch will be coming out again at the Béla Bartók National Concert Hall as it hosts another round of musical ‘battle’. When we talk about instrumental duels in the Hungarian capital these days, it is no longer necessarily Bach and Marchand, or even Liszt and Thalberg, that we are thinking of, because we have our own riveting concert series right here at Müpa Budapest.

Attendind a performance of Messiah is always a thrilling experience, but it is especially so when Handel’s work – which has become a national classic in England – is performed by a dedicated ensemble like the legendary German flagship of the international early-music scene: the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, now with over 44 years of history behind it. The storied chamber orchestra will perform with one of the world’s finest mixed choirs, the RIAS Kammerchor, which also hails from Berlin and was founded in the years immediately following the Second World War.

The Innermost Room (or tisztaszoba, literally, ‘clean room’) is an ornately furnished room in provincial homes, which is kept clean at all times and is reserved primarily for the reception of valued guests. In the Székesfehérvár Ballet Theatre’s dance theatrical production, this room with a special status in the house is a metaphor or symbol, denoting a ‘place’ where we keep the treasured secrets of our soul.