With the support of the National Cultural Fund, on April 15, the Vác city sports hall hosted a particularly large-scale cultural event as part of the national “Petőfi 200” program series. with a number of contributors, performing Carl Orff: Carmina Burana under the direction of Ákos Verebélyi, director of the Vác school district center.
One of the originators, main organizer and artistic director of the program, Alexander Bencethe conductor of the Vác Civitas Symphony Orchestra and the Vox Humana Choir answered our question after evaluating the concert and said: it was a great challenge to coordinate the particularly large joint choir consisting of more than a dozen choirs, since in addition to the separate rehearsals, only once before the concert they could practice together on the spot, where, moreover, it was only possible to find a place for the members of each voice very far from each other.
– This required a lot of attention and discipline from everyone, to put it mildly, we had plenty of reasons to be nervous, but we like such special tasks and we are happy that the audience really liked the performance, the applause and standing ovation lasted a long time on the spot, and the community subsequent media comments are also encouraging – Bence Sándor told our newspaper.
Embedded in the musical event, he gave a celebratory speech Bence of Rétvár State Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior, parliamentary representative of the constituency and Demeter Solidthe director of the Petőfi Literary Museum, and of course poems were also recited, this time Just Imre in the interpretation of a performer.
The musical part of the program was performed by: Vác Civitas Symphony Orchestra, Vox Humana Choir, the Budapest Lute Choir, the Váci Harmonia Choir, the students of the Zoltán Kodály Elementary School of Art in Szobi, the students of István Fekete Szobi Elementary School, the students of the Géza Fejedelem Reformed Elementary School, students of the Váci Árpád Fejedelem Elementary School, the Váci Bartók-Pikéthy Music Vocational High School and Music School, Elementary Art School, members of the Thália Art Association, the Váci Radnóti Miklós Elementary
School students and students of the Váci Cathedral Choir School.
The contributors performed the introductory musical notes under the direction of Bence Sándor, and the performance of Carmina Burana was conducted by Ákos Verebélyi.
When asked how Orff’s work was chosen, Sándor Bence highlighted the parallelism between the main themes of the grandiose piece of music and Petőfi’s oeuvre, the homage to the wonders of nature, the setting to music and poetry of the exhilarating experience of partying and drinking wine, but above all the perception of the intoxication of love in music and lyrically .
Text: Zoltán Ribáry
Photo: Dóra Pesti / Ilona Varga