"...Beethoven's music demands a part in life. It stirs you up, it shocks you. It makes you cry and makes you laugh. It makes you turn inward and sends you off to battle: it takes a stand, it acts, it fights in every moment...It is as honest, as fervent, as unmasked as music has never been...a confession and a hymn, a defence and an accusation, a manifesto to humanity…", Bence Szabolcsi: Beethoven – Artist and artwork on the border between two periods
Maxim Vengerov is one of the world's best violinists, often referred to as the greatest stringed-instrument player of our time. He started playing the violin at the age of five and won first prize at the Henryk Wieniawski International Violin Competition for young violinists at the age of 10. In 1987, when his teacher Zakhar Bron left Russia to become a teacher at the Royal Academy of Music in London, Vengerov moved after him with his mother and later moved after Bron to Lübeck. In 1990, he won first prize at the Carl Flesch International Violin Competition in London, and has been actively giving concerts ever since. In the early years of his career, he released several recordings, which received prestigious prizes (Grammy, Edison, Echo Classic, etc.) In 2005, he suffered a shoulder injury; around this time, he began to intensively pursue his conducting career. In 2010, he was the chief conductor of the Gstaad Festival Orchestra. He teaches at numerous places, including the International Menuhin Music Academy in Switzerland and the Royal Academy of Music in London, and he is also a member or chairman of the jury of several major violin competitions. He plays on an "ex-Kreutzer" Stradivarius violin, made in 1727, with the bow of former string player Jasha Heifetz.
Maxim Vengerov has performed with the MÁV Symphony Orchestra several times since 2019. This year, the audience will be able to admire the virtuoso violinists for the fifth time at Müpa Budapest on March 16, conducted by Gábor Takács-Nagy.
Gábor Takács-Nagy, a Hungarian conductor living in Switzerland, who became world-famous as the founding violinist of the Takács Quartet, has been conducting since 2002. He is a professor at the Academy of Music of Geneva and also teaches conducting masterclasses around the world. He is an Honorary Professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Since 2007, he has been Music Director of the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra (Switzerland); his concerts features world class artists. Since 2011, he has been the Chief Conductor of the Manchester Camerata, a British chamber orchestra based in Manchester. Since 2005, he has been directing the MÁV Symphony Orchestra’s strings workshops and the orchestra's new chamber orchestra series as a musical advisor. He was the orchestra's first guest conductor from 2008, and was chief conductor and artistic director between 2010-2012. Since 2012, he has been the only Guest Conductor of the Budapest Festival Orchestra, and since 2018, he has been the Permanent Guest Conductor of the MÁV Symphony Orchestra. He has received numerous awards, including the Franz Liszt Prize in Hungary in 1982, the Bartók-Pásztory Prize in 2017 and the Prima Primissima Prize in 2021.
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