Claudio Nicolescu, the Audience Award winner of the 21st Hungarian Music Festival.
The Liszt Institute Bucharest organised its flagship event, the Festival of Hungarian Music, for the 21st time between 12-15 May. The festival aims to introduce classical and contemporary Hungarian musical values, and to discover and support talented young individuals (aged 18-35) who enjoy performing Hungarian musical works. The Festival of Hungarian Music also aims to commemorate the excellences and significant events of Hungarian musical scene, and this year, the 150th anniversary of the Liszt Academy was celebrated at the festival.
Over three evenings of the festival's competition section, 19 young musicians performed 13 pieces – solo and in duos – before the jury and the audience. The contestants' 20-25 minute programmes featured approximately 130 minutes of Hungarian music performed on piano, flute, cello, violin, clarinet, and bassoon. Works by Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály, Ernő Dohnányi, György Ligeti, Emil Petrovics, Béla Kovács, Ferenc Doppler, Dávid Popper, and Dávid Pavlovits were performed by the young artists.
On 15 May, the fourth day of the festival, Gergely Madaras, conductor and music director of the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège was the guest of the gala. In connection with the 150th anniversary of the Liszt Academy, he praised the significance of the higher education music institution, which enjoys considerable international recognition and is worthy of Ferenc Liszt's spirit, as well as its role in European musical life. Gergely Madaras's words were reinforced by a recital given by two students of the Liszt Ferenc University of Music, Lázár Tóth and Pál Gavrucza-Nagy, featuring Edward Elgar's E minor Violin Sonata, Béla Bartók's Andante, and Zoltán Kodály's Epigrams.
Following a performance by the students of the Liszt Ferenc University of Music in Budapest, István Tóth, the founder of the festival and current president of the festival jury, briefly evaluated this year's festival, highlighting the importance of cooperation with the local music university and other Romanian music education institutions. András László Kósa emphasised that the interest in the event and its attachment to the Liszt Institute Bucharest are demonstrated by the fact that several of the contestants in recent years are now students of former contestants.
The first prize in the competition was awarded to Alexandru Stoian, a third-year piano student at the National University of Music, Bucharest who won the jury's award with his performance of Béla Bartók's 3 Burlesques Op. 8 as his Hungarian musical piece. Alexandru Stoian will give his concert, which he won as a prize, at the Collegium Hungaricum in Vienna. The second prize was awarded to violinist Andrea Nistor and Vietnamese cellist Nguen Thu Giang. Both are students at the National University of Music, Bucharest and performed Zoltán Kodály's Duo for Violin and Cello. Their concert will be held at the Hungarian Academy in Rome in autumn 2025. The third place was awarded to Andrei Cozma, a clarinetist and an 11th-grade student at the George Enescu Music High School in Bucharest. His programme included – among others – two works by Béla Kovács: "After you, Mr. Gershwin" and "Hommage a J. S. Bach". He will give his concert at the old Liszt Academy in Budapest, as a result of the cooperation with the Liszt Ferenc University of Music.The "In memoriam Lajos Bács" award, established in memory of the spiritual father of the event, was presented by Verona Maier, pianist and pro-rector of the National University of Music, Bucharest, to the members of the Duo Aetherium, a piano four-hands duo. The piano duo, consisting of Ștefania Fieraru and Diana Negreanu, won the opportunity to give a concert at the Liszt Institute in Bucharest in January 2026, on Lajos Bács's birthday, with their performance of György Ligeti's "5 Pieces for Four Hands". The RomanianPerforming Artists' Association also rewarded a contestant this year, and Csenge Dorottya Pap, a student of the Plugor Sándor High School of Arts in Sfântu Gheorghe, will participate as a scholarship holder in the ICon Arts summer camp organised by the association. The young artist performed Dávid Pavlovits's: Prelude No. 3, 4, 5 (The Howk, The Blue One, Bagatelle). The audience chose Ciprian Nicolescu as the winner, a bassoon student at the National University of Music, Bucharest and thus the Liszt Institute Bucharest will host a special bassoon evening in December of this year. The young bassoonist performed Emil Petrovics's Passacaglia in Blues.
The sold-out events – as usual in previous years – were a huge success in the Romanian capital.
