With 36 unique and stately concert venues, 35 world-renowned soloists and the involvement of 100 university students, the Festival Academy Budapest, founded by the husband-and-wife team of violinists and artistic directors Katalin Kokas and Barnabás Kelemen, reshapes the usual framework of summer classical music festivals with groundbreaking concerts.

In just eight years, the Festival Academy Budapest, which both Joshua Bell and Vilde Frang have cited as their favourite international festival, has developed into one of the world’s most unique such events, boasting a simultaneously instinctive and intentional concept of combining masterpieces representing the high art of classical music with folk and Hungarian Gypsy music, along with an all-embracing programme of master classes.

Joshua Bell, Katalin Kokas (violin), Barnabás Kelemen (viola), Nicolas Altstaedt (cello), Zoltán Fejérvári (piano) at the Liszt Academy, Festival Academy Budapest 2021 

The festival is a complex system, having grown into a Festival Academy Budapest miniverse that, in addition to making Budapest the chamber music capital of the world for 10 days each summer, connects the glittering world of the stage with the art of teaching all year round – from early levels to highly advanced ones, focusing on the next generation, energy, talent and knowledge.

The festival welcomes everyone to join in on a ten-day journey. Although based at the Liszt Academy of Music and the Budapest Music Center, it sometimes departs from these usual spots for an entire day.

Barnabás Kelemen, Katalin Kokas, Veronique de Raedemaeker (violin), Maxim Rysanov, Razvan Popovici, Dmitry Smirnov (viola), Christian Pierre La Marca, Dóra Kokas, Mon-Pou Lee (cello), Igor Davidovics (lute), Soma Dinyés (harpshicord), Széchenyi Bath, Festival Academy Budapest 201

In addition to enjoying the thematic concerts on ‘Museum Day’, the festival audience will also get to look around the National Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, the sound dome of the House of Hungarian Music and the Liszt Museum. Completing their remembrance of one of the darkest eras of humanity in the House of Terror will be Shostakovich’s Eighth String Quartet.

The place to unwind that night is the Széchenyi Thermal Bath, where the audience will be pampered by live music along with the warm medicinal mineral water.

The first Sunday brings a picnic with family and friends on Margaret Island, where we will get to enjoy jazz, world and folk music concerts and theatrical performances in the green heart of Budapest.

Library Day offers exciting venues for everyone who likes to consume their music together with the written word: the audience wanders from one wonderful place to another, with Baroque music at each stop.

Gypsy children from Zalakomár, Liszt Academy, Festival Academy Budapest 2021

Bartók Day brings the composer closer to the audience in every way through his chamber works, with György Kurtág dissecting his predecessor’s Fourth String Quartet for three intensive hours with the Kelemen Quartet in a public master class. The highlight of the day features four of Bartók’s concertos, with Vilde Frang, Maxim Rysanov, Barnabás Kelemen and Sunwook Kim serving as soloists.

The closing day of this display of Hungarian culture will be a celebration entitled ‘Viva La Gitane’. As part of the endlessly thrilling ‘Magyar spirit’, we will also be focusing on Gypsy culture in all of its originality and colourfulness, starting with works by Brahms and lasting through evening dinners spent listening to Gypsy music from such world-famous Roma musicians as Ferenc Snétberger, Roby Lakatos, Parno Graszt and Lajos Sárközi Jr. Films, photo exhibitions, literature and roundtable discussions will complete this unforgettable day.

Barnabás Kelemen, Vilde Frang (violin), Katalin Kokas (viola), Nicolas Altstaedt (cello), Zoltán Fejérvári (piano) Budapest Music Center / Festival Academy Budapest 2021

The 10-day programme also emphasises education, as the artists performing at the festival will also hold more than 200 individual master classes open to the public, from morning until late.

Joining us at the many special venues around Budapest will be international stars like Vilde Frang, Maxim Rysanov, Shai Wosner, Jose Gallardo, Andreas Ottensamer, Jonathan Cohen and Hagai Shaham, along with world-famous Hungarian acts such as the Lajos Sárközy Jr & Orchestra and the Szalonna Folk Band.

Find out more: fesztivalakademia.hu