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In 2003, when Müpa Budapest was nothing more than a concrete shell, its architect Gábor Zoboki sat in what was to become the Béla Bartók National Concert Hall with conductor Ádám Fischer. “‘Gábor,’ he told me, ‘this is the Valhalla. We have to play Wagner here.’” In the decades that have followed, the yearly Budapest Wagner Days have become a major feature of the city’s musical landscape.
Zoboki had won a competition to design a new cultural centre to house their Ludwig Museum's collection of contemporary art. Zoboki was an architect by trade but a musician by inclination: his love of music started young and then burgeoned in the Dance House movement of the 1970s, when Hungarian folk dance venues became a focus of resistance to the communist regime's dominance of culture. He was taught piano by Magda Thománé Molnár, a pupil of Kodály’s, sang in choirs and then conducted them; he also composed. And he was convinced that Budapest needed a new concert hall.
“Everyone knows the Liszt Academy: it has a fantastic chamber hall for Viennese classical music, but it’s not compatible with Shostakovich or Bruckner or Mahler. And everybody knew that Hungary, the country of music, has never had a chance to build a hall where you could play Bartók’s Concerto.”
It's beautiful. It never occurred to me that a chamber hall could be compatible with this over here but not that over there. I think that I have always assumed that it came in a one size fits all.
Zoboki had won a competition to design a new cultural centre to house their Ludwig Museum's collection of contemporary art. Zoboki was an architect by trade but a musician by inclination: his love of music started young and then burgeoned in the Dance House movement of the 1970s, when Hungarian folk dance venues became a focus of resistance to the communist regime's dominance of culture. He was taught piano by Magda Thománé Molnár, a pupil of Kodály’s, sang in choirs and then conducted them; he also composed. And he was convinced that Budapest needed a new concert hall.
“Everyone knows the Liszt Academy: it has a fantastic chamber hall for Viennese classical music, but it’s not compatible with Shostakovich or Bruckner or Mahler. And everybody knew that Hungary, the country of music, has never had a chance to build a hall where you could play Bartók’s Concerto.”
Gábor Zoboki, architect of Müpa Budapest
The architect of Hungary's National Concert Hall tells the story of the hall, its distinctive features and about his plans for the future.
bachtrack.com
It's beautiful. It never occurred to me that a chamber hall could be compatible with this over here but not that over there. I think that I have always assumed that it came in a one size fits all.
