A Dunánál / By the Danube

"In 2015, I and some others received an interesting request from the poet Géza Sz?cs, the government commissioner in charge of the Hungarian programme of the World Exhibition in Milan that year. ?e artistic concept of the programme was set around the theme of the Danube, so he expected a work related to the River Danube from us composers. I decided to set to music a poem that had long captured my imagination as one of the universal poems of the Hungarian people, in which, however, the Danube is a link not only for us but for the whole of Central Europe: a symbol of our interdependence and shared history.

Now, nine years later, when the orchestra of the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra invited me to create a new symphonic composition, it seemed obvious to take a closer look at the song that had not been performed since. I immediately fell under the poem's spell again. It didn't take me long to sit down in my imagination next to the tragically fated poet on the banks of the Danube and let him present in my mind's eye the Hungarians of old, who had to "drag hoes, kil and embrace". Fortunately, the musical material also seemed usable, so I soon threw myself into transforming it into a cantata with orchestral accompaniment, or using the Mozartian-Beethovenian terminology, concert aria."

Levente Gyöngyösi