A tree on stage, a swallow in flight, and a brook meandering through the evening’s score: the Budapest Festival Orchestra presents a sublime tribute to the natural world. Under the visionary leadership of its founder, Iván Fischer, this world-class ensemble combines musical liberty with profound artistic insight. In Rautavaara’s Cantus Arcticus, orchestral textures interweave with birdsong from the far north – fragile, ethereal, and moving. Kirill Gerstein, a soloist of immense intellectual rigour and lyricism, brings a surprising transparency to Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto. The evening culminates in Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, a timeless homage to the earth. Rather than a calculated manifesto, this concert is an authentic gesture: music as pure laudatio, brought to life with the daring, imagination, and humanity for which this orchestra is internationally revered.

Programme

• Rautavaara Cantus Arcticus, Concerto for Birds and Orchestra
• Bartók Concerto for Piano No. 3
• Beethoven Symphony No. 6 in F major, Opus 68, 'Pastoral'