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The 2025-26 season of Concerto Budapest will include thematic festivals, world-renowned soloists, and a diverse concert program, with pianist János Balázs as the featured artist.
“Concerto Budapest has set nothing but values and quality as its banner,” said Irén Novák at the event. The Deputy State Secretary for Arts and Community Cultivation highlighted the orchestra’s mission to bring classical music to 50 small Hungarian towns and villages. This will make the values of classical music accessible to people who might not have access to it without the program, she added.
The loyalty of Concerto Budapest audiences is a compass for us: we strive to meet this benchmark and to deliver the highest possible artistic standards,”
Gábor Devich, the orchestra’s General Director, stressed.
“Today, when the basic values of existence are becoming relativized, art has become more important than ever: to show what is good, to preserve the humanity of communities and to give a compass to the people of the future,” emphasized András Keller, violinist-conductor and chief music director of Concerto Budapest.
According to the press release issued for the event,
the featured artist of Concerto Budapest’s 2025-26 season will be pianist János Balázs, who will perform as soloist in several key concerts, including the orchestra’s Christmas concert.
The three-day autumn festival dedicated to the memory of Béla Bartók (Hungarian composer and pianist) will begin with a chamber evening at the Budapest Music Center, followed by four major concerts at the Liszt Academy featuring Bartók’s emblematic orchestral works.
Concerto Budapest’s returning Hungarian guest artists, such as Mihály Berecz, Dénes Várjon, and Barnabás Kelemen, will also perform works by Beethoven, Dohnányi, and Brahms.
Once again, the orchestra will be joined on stage by world-renowned soloists with a rich repertoire: Paul Lewis, Mikhail Pletnyov, Rafal Blechacz, Anna Vinnitskaya, and Jean-Efflam Bavouzet will perform piano concertos by composers such as Beethoven, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and Ravel.
Concerto Budapest’s repertoire for the 2025-26 season ranges from the Baroque to the 21st century, including two symphonic poems by Ferenc Liszt, “Les Préludes” and “Hungaria,” and a special Christmas concert featuring Tchaikovsky’s works and Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 3, with János Balázs as soloist.
In 2026, the orchestra will hold its first three-day violin festival, The Feast of the Violin, featuring Hungarian violinists, and in November it will once again organize a festival of contemporary music, The Day of Listening.
György Kurtág, Honorary President of Concerto Budapest, will celebrate his 100th birthday next February. To mark the centenary, the orchestra is organizing a two-day program at the Liszt Academy with the composer’s active participation. On February 20, 2026, as part of the Kurtág 100 Festival, Concerto Budapest will pay tribute to the composer’s life’s work with a major concert at Müpa Budapest, where it will also present György Kurtág’s new opera and new piano concerto.
Concerto Budapest will return to the UK and Ireland for the third time at the end of the year, and the Concerto Master School program will continue in 2025-26. In 2025, the orchestra will continue its close cooperation with the Virtuoso talent development program, join the Festival Academy Budapest’s new project for future-oriented training of young musicians, enter into a strategic partnership with the Hungarian House of Music and perform in eight cities in Hungary at the invitation of Philharmonia Hungary in the 2025-26 season.
Via MTI, Featured image: MTI/Lakatos Péter