T16. NACIONAL DE HUNGRÍA/RAJNA/RÁNKI “Imperial”

The HUNGARIAN NATIONAL PHILHARMONIC, one of the country's leading symphony orchestras, celebrated its centenary in the spring of 2023.

Following the tenures of János Ferencsik and Ken-Ichiro Kobayashi, a new chapter began in 1997 with the appointment of Zoltán Kocsis as music director.

During the two subsequent decades, the ensemble performed not only the great classics but also works previously absent from its repertoire. With versatility, it brought recent Hungarian music to its audience, through chamber concerts, activities for young people, and projects aimed at filling historical gaps.

In that context, it performed rare works by Richard Strauss, Debussy, Schoenberg, Ravel, and Rachmaninov. Bartók's music holds a prominent place in its repertoire, with recordings released in the Bartók New CD Series.

Its subscription concerts feature renowned soloists and guest conductors, as well as young Hungarian musicians.

The orchestra has maintained the sensitivity with which its members listen to and work with one another. Each musician can shine individually, but all share the responsibility of the ensemble and the goal of achieving the highest level of quality in every performance, an ambition that goes beyond technical perfection.

Following the death of Zoltán Kocsis, Zsolt Hamar, a Liszt Prize winner who had already worked with the orchestra as its first chief conductor, assumed the post of music director from March 2017 to August 2020.

Since autumn 2022, coinciding with the 100th anniversary season, György Vashegyi holds the position of music director.

In recent decades, the orchestra has given more than 350 concerts abroad and has toured approximately 40 countries.

It has performed in halls and festivals such as the Avery Fisher Hall in New York, the Suntory Hall in Tokyo, the Birmingham Symphony Hall, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, the Enescu Festival in Bucharest, the Colmar Festival, the Canary Islands Festival, and the Beethoven Festival in Bogotá.

In 2011, on the occasion of the bicentenary of Liszt's birth, it performed in the Bazaar in Brussels and gave a concert in the Vatican in honor of Pope Benedict XVI.

The HNPO has toured Colombia, Turkey, South Korea, China, and Switzerland, and regularly visits France, Japan, Germany, Romania, Spain, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

In January 2023, it returned to Japan for another tour under the baton of Ken-Ichiro Kobayashi.

Dezsö Ranki is considered one of the best Hungarian pianists. He is recognized both in the classical repertoire (Mozart, Beethoven) and in the romantic (Schubert, Schumann) and modern (Bartók or Kurtág) repertoires.

He studied at the Franz Liszt Academy with Pál Kadosa. He began his international career after winning the Robert Schumann Competition in Germany in 1969.

Since then, he has given concerts regularly in most European countries, North and South America, as well as in Japan and South Korea.

In addition to recitals, he has performed with orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, the French National Orchestra, the Konzerthausorchester in Berlin, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Gewandhausorchester in Leipzig, the Dresden Philharmonic, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, the German Radio Philharmonic, the Suisse Romande Orchestra, the Royal Flemish Philharmonic in Liège, the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Seoul Philharmonic, and the NHK in Tokyo.

He has performed under the direction of Frans Brüggen, Ivan Fischer, Vladimir Jurowski, Kirill Kondrashin, Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel, Daniele Gatti, Zoltán Kocsis, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Kurt Sanderling, Sir Georg Solti, and Jeffrey Tate.

Dezsö Ranki is a guest at the most famous festivals, such as Ascona, Lockenhaus, Prague Spring, Weimar, Schwetzinger Festspiele, Wiener Festwochen, MDR Musiksommer, Kissinger Summer, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Schumannfest Düsseldorf, Grange de Meslay, and Roque d'Anthéron.

Dezsö Ranki's recordings have been released by Teldec, Quint Records, and Denon.

For his interpretation of Chopin's Études op. 10, he received the "Grand Prix du Disque".

His latest published CDs include works by Satie and Liszt, and two piano pieces by Barnabás Dukay.

His latest project includes the performance of the complete symphonic poems of Franz Liszt, which he presents in several concerts.

Dezsö Ranki has received numerous awards throughout his career, including the Liszt, Kossuth, and Bartók-Pásztory prizes.

Martin Rajna has become one of the most outstanding young Hungarian conductors in recent years. At 29 years old, and already with an outstanding curriculum, he was appointed early this year as the new Music Director of the Luxembourg Philharmonic, with a four-year contract starting in September 2026.

Rajna continues to mark several significant European debuts: in addition to Luxembourg, he has taken the podium of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra, and the Orchestra of the Teatro La Fenice.

In July 2025, he conducted a new production of Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle and Poulenc's La voix humaine at the Tyrol Festival in Erl (Austria), both directed by Claus Guth.

At the Hungarian State Opera in Budapest, which has employed him since 2021 and appointed him principal conductor in 2023, he has recently been on the podium for Der fliegende Holländer, Macbeth, Die Fledermaus, and Maria Stuarda.

He also continues to conduct concerts with the HUNGARIAN NATIONAL PHILHARMONIC and the Győr Philharmonic Orchestra.

Previous awards for Rajna include a fellowship in 2022 to participate in the Forum Dirigieren program of the German Music Council, and he was also selected for the Lucerne Festival Conducting Fellowship, where his mentor was Thomas Adès.

In 2018, he won the Prima Junior Prize of Hungary and in 2023 he was the winner of the Talent Prize of the György Cziffra Festival.

In previous seasons, Rajna conducted the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra, the Hof Symphony Orchestra, the Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester, the Philharmonie Südwestfalen, the Slovenian Radio Philharmonic in Ljubljana, and orchestras from Budapest such as the MÁV Symphony Orchestra, Danubia, and Dohnányi.

Martin Rajna graduated from the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, where he studied with Ádám Medveczky and András Ligeti, and expanded his training at the Franz Liszt University of Music in Weimar with conductors Nicolás Pasquet and Ekhart Wycik.

In 2021, he was selected to participate in the mentorship program of the Peter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation, where he worked with masters such as Péter Eötvös, György Kurtág, Fabián Panisello, and Magnus Lindberg.

In 2023, he was assistant conductor to master Ádám Fischer during the annual "Budapest Wagner Days".