ORQUESTA FILARMÓNICA NACIONAL DE HUNGRÍA
DEZSŐ RÁNKI, piano
MARTIN RAJNA, Conductor
Beethoven, Concierto para piano núm.5 “Emperador”
Bartók, Concierto para orquesta
SALE OF SINGLE TICKETS: From July 30, 2026.
HUNGARIAN NATIONAL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
The Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra, one of the country’s leading symphony orchestras, celebrated its centenary in the spring of 2023.
After the tenures of János Ferencsik and Ken-Ichiro Kobayashi, a new chapter in its history began in 1997 with the appointment of Zoltán Kocsis as music director. During the next two decades, the ensemble performed not only the great classics but also works previously absent from its repertoire. With versatility, it brought recent Hungarian music closer to its audience, through chamber concerts, activities for young people and projects that sought to fill historical gaps. In that context, it performed infrequently heard works by Richard Strauss, Debussy, Schoenberg, Ravel and Rachmaninov. Bartók’s music occupies a prominent place in its repertoire, with performances recorded in the Bartók New CD Series. Its subscription concerts feature renowned soloists and guest conductors, as well as young Hungarian musicians.
The orchestra has preserved the sensitivity with which its members listen to and work with one another. Each musician can shine individually, but all share responsibility for the ensemble and the goal of achieving the highest level of quality in every performance, an ambition that goes beyond technical perfection.
After the death of Zoltán Kocsis, Zsolt Hamar, winner of the Liszt Prize and who had already worked with the orchestra as first chief conductor, assumed the post of music director from March 2017 to August 2020. Since autumn 2022, coinciding with the 100th anniversary season, György Vashegyi has held the post of music director.
In recent decades, the orchestra has given more than 350 concerts abroad and toured around 40 countries. It has appeared in venues and festivals such as New York’s Avery Fisher Hall, Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, Birmingham Symphony Hall, Frankfurt’s Alte Oper, the Enescu Festival in Bucharest, the Colmar Festival, the Canary Islands Festival and the Beethoven Festival in Bogotá. In 2011, on the occasion of the bicentenary of Liszt’s birth, it performed at Bozar in Brussels and gave a concert at the Vatican in honour of Pope Benedict XVI. The HNPO has toured Colombia, Turkey, South Korea, China and Switzerland, and regularly visits France, Japan, Germany, Romania, Spain, Slovakia and Slovenia. In January 2023 it returned to Japan for another tour under the baton of Ken-Ichiro Kobayashi.
DEZSÖ RÁNKI. Piano
Dezsö Ranki is regarded as one of the finest Hungarian pianists. He is recognised in the classical repertoire (Mozart, Beethoven), the romantic repertoire (Schubert, Schumann) and the modern (Bartok or Kurtag).
He studied at the Franz Liszt Academy with Pal Kadosa. He began his international career after winning the Robert Schumann Competition in Germany in 1969. Since then, he has given concerts regularly in most European countries, North and South America, as well as Japan and South Korea. In addition to recitals, he has performed with orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, the National Orchestra of France, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Dresden Philharmonic, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, the German Radio Philharmonic, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Liège, the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra and Tokyo’s NHK, under conductors Frans Brüggen, Ivan Fischer, Vladimir Jurowski, Kirill Kondrashin, Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel, Daniele Gatti, Zoltan Kocsis, Gennady Roshdestvensky, Kurt Sanderling, Sir Georg Solti and Jeffrey Tate.
Dezsö Ranki is invited to the most famous festivals, such as Ascona, Lockenhaus, Prague Spring, Weimar, Schwetzinger Festspiele, Wiener Festwochen, MDR Musiksommer, Kissinger Summer, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Schumannfest Düsseldorf, Grange de Meslay and Roque d’Anthéron.
Dezsö Ranki’s recordings have been released by Teldec, Quint Records and Denon. For his interpretation of Chopin’s Études op. 10 he received the «Grand Prix du Disque». Bartók’s Mikrokosmos for Teldec was also highly successful.
He regularly performs on two pianos and in four-hand recitals with Edit Klukon. His latest released CDs include works by Satie and Liszt, and two piano pieces by Barnabás Dukay. His latest project includes the performance of the complete symphonic poems of Franz Liszt, which they present in several concerts.
Dezsö Ranki has received numerous prizes throughout his career, including the Liszt, Kossuth and Bartók-Pásztory awards.
MARTIN RAJNA. Conductor
Martin Rajna has become one of the most outstanding young Hungarian conductors of recent years. At the age of 29, and already with an outstanding résumé, he was appointed at the beginning of this year as the new Music Director of the Luxembourg Philharmonic, with a four-year contract starting in September 2026.
In the current 2024/25 season, Rajna continues to chalk up several significant European debuts: besides Luxembourg, he has stepped onto the podium of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra of Teatro La Fenice. In July 2025 he will conduct at the Tyrol Festival in Erl (Austria) a new production of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Poulenc’s La Voix humaine, both directed by Claus Guth.
At the Hungarian State Opera in Budapest, which has engaged him since 2021 and appointed him principal conductor in 2023, he has recently been on the podium for Der fliegende Holländer, Macbeth, Die Fledermaus and Maria Stuarda. He also continues to conduct concerts with the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra and the Győr Philharmonic Orchestra.
Rajna’s previous awards include a scholarship in 2022 to participate in the German Music Council’s Forum Dirgieren programme and he was also selected for the Conducting Fellowship of the Lucerne Festival Academy, where his mentor was Thomas Adés. In 2018 he won Hungary’s Prima Junior Prize and in 2023 he was the winner of the György Cziffra Festival Talent Award.
In previous seasons, Rajna has conducted the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra, the Hof Symphony Orchestra, the Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester, the Philharmonie Südwestfalen, the Slovenian Radio Philharmonic Orchestra in Ljubljana and Budapest orchestras such as the MÁV, Danubia and Dohnányi symphony orchestras.
Martin Rajna graduated from the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, where he studied with Ádám Medveczky and András Ligeti and expanded his training at the Franz Liszt University of Music in Weimar with conductors Nicolás Pasquet and Ekhart Wycik. In 2021 he was selected to participate in the mentoring programme of the Peter Eötvös Foundation for Contemporary Music, where he worked with masters such as Péter Eötvös, György Kurtág, Fabián Panisello and Magnus Lindberg. In 2023 he was assistant conductor to Maestro Ádám Fischer during the annual “Budapest Wagner Days”.
