Online concert of the MÁV Symphony Orchestra in memory of Géza Szőcs

The MÁV Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Gergely Kesselyák will perform in memorioam of Géza Szőcs, poet, writer, literary scholar and politician who has died on 5 November 2020. The concert will be on 3 February at 19.00 at the Liszt Academy.

Géza Szőcs was born in 1953 in Marosvásárhely. He completed his higher education at the Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, in Hungarian and Russian, graduating in 1978. During his university studies, he edited a trilingual student newspaper. His first book of poetry was published in 1975. In 1979 he studied for a year in Vienna on a Herder scholarship. The main aim and content of his poetic and editorial work was the defence of the rights of the Hungarians in Transylvania, for which he was constantly attacked by the authorities and arrested in 1982. In 1986 he emigrated to Switzerland, from where he returned to Cluj-Napoca after the Romanian Revolution of 1989. He was a journalist, an editor and was also involved in political life. He started to play an active role in Hungary after 2010, serving as the Minister of Culture, President of the Hungarian PEN Club, and from 2012 as the Prime Minister’s chief advisor, while continuing his literary work. He has received numerous honours, including the Beaver Crown of Hungary, the Robert Graves Prize, the Bethlen Gábor Prize, the Grand Prize of the European Academy of Vienna, the Attila József Prize, and the Kossuth Prize.

Géza Szőcs was a long-time friend of the MÁV Symphony Orchestra, and regularly attended the orchestra’s concerts. In 2017, when the orchestra’s principal conductor, Péter Csaba, was awarded the Order of Honour of the French Republic, he delivered a speech at the award ceremony, emphasising that the conductor, who was born in Cluj, had deepened the decades-long ties between Transylvania, Hungary and French culture through his life’s work. Péter Csaba, who himself started his successful artistic career in Transylvania, wrote a warm letter expressing his grief and condolences.

In the first part of the programme, the audience will listen to popular arias by Mozart: The Magic Flute and Don Giovanni. In the second part, a contemporary opera excerpt from Gyula Fekete’s Excelsior! will be performed alongside a slow symphony by contemporary Russian composer Alexei Ribnikov to express mourning. This will be followed by excerpts from György Selmeczi’s operas Szirén and Veron, composed to a poem by Géza Szőcs.