THE NUTCRACKER AND HOLIDAY TUNES - Christmas with the MÁV Symphony Orchestra

The conductor of the concert, István Dénes, is also a composer. He instrumented Beethoven's famous and popular Moonlight Sonata in the summer of 2016, and conducted it for the first time at the traditional Beethoven concert series in Martonvásár, Hungary. Rezső Ott began his musical career as a bassoonist and later studied composing at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. As of today, the productive composer has released five recordings and has received seven musical awards. He started arranging Christmas carols in 2015, and the series has been growing ever since. The plot of Tchaikovsky's famous ballet The Nutcracker is set at Christmas, and the suite composed from the excerpts of the ballet are classics of Christmas concerts. Prokofiev takes a different approach to winter, with his music depicting the journey of the Troika, a sleigh pulled by three horses, travelling across the endless snowfields of Russia. This exquisite character piece is part of the score for the 1934 film Lieutenant Kizhe. The solos of the Christmas Carols are sung by Kinga Kriszta and István Horváth, the private singers of the Hungarian State Opera.