Budapest Festival Orchestra

The Budapest Festival Orchestra was founded in 1983 by Iván Fischer and pianist Zoltán Kocsis. Numerous stars worked with the orchestra in its early years — most notably Sir Georg Solti, who served as Principal Guest Conductor until his death in the fall of 1997, as well as such soloists as the violinists Yehudi Menuhin, Pinchas Zukerman, and Gidon Kremer and the pianists András Schiff, Radu Lupu, and Richard Goode. In Budapest, the musicians give about 50 performances per season in the MüPa Concert Hall and the Franz Liszt Academy. They also perform regularly at major festivals and in the music capitals. They have performed at the Salzburg Festival, the Konzerthaus and Musikverein in Vienna, New York’s Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, the BBC Proms in London, the Maggio Musicale in Florence, and the Prague Spring Festival. Since 2018, the Budapest Festival Orchestra has been the resident orchestra at the Vicenza Opera Festival, where Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos will be performed in October 2024. Young audiences are specifically cultivated, for example with concerts in which they can dance and such projects as “Midnight Music” and “Cocoa Concerts.” The orchestra also presents the Bridging Europe Festival, which focuses on a different European cultural nation each year, with the entire continent taking center stage in 2024. The Budapest Festival Orchestra, which has won numerous awards for its CDs, has been an independent foundation since 1992 and is supported by the State of Hungary, the City of Budapest, and national and international circles of friends.

Lucerne Festival (IMF) debut on 26 August 1986 playing music by Franz Liszt and Franz Schubert.

April 2024