The Budapest Festival Orchestra will hold a special, free outdoor concert titled “Plea for Peace” on Aug. 31 in Budapest’s Heroes’ Square. The concert aims to highlight the suffering of victims in war-torn Ukraine, Israel, and Palestine, through music that emphasizes peace, respect, friendship, and love.
The concert’s program will last about one hour and include Augusta Read Thomas’s work for soprano and orchestra, “Plea for Peace,” featuring Mirella Hagen; Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins featuring Ukrainian violinist Diana Tishchenko and Russian violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky; three works by Israeli singer-songwriter Idan Raichel; and the finale of Mahler’s Third Symphony, subtitled “What Love Tells Me.” Music Director Iván Fischer will conduct.
The Budapest Festival Orchestra often closes the summer with a free outdoor concert in Heroes’ Square, sometimes with a political message. In 1993 during the Bosnian War, the orchestra performed Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony featuring a choir of Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian singers, and in 2001 it performed a concert titled “With Gypsies” featuring Roma musicians.
