Following experiments by a mad professor the entire population of the French capital falls asleep. The magic streets and cafés of Paris sink into deep silence, only six people who are not affected by the rays of the mysterious scientist remain awake: the guard on top of the Eiffel Tower and five passengers on a plane. In 2005 a young French composer, Yan Maresz, was commissioned by the Musée du Louvre to write music to the 1925 silent film by the legendary French director, René Clair [While Paris Sleeps]. His work for chamber ensemble and live electronics simultaneously comments minutely on the film and serves as psychologising incidental music. The piece will be brought to Budapest by the Ensemble Court-Circuit, founded in 1991, perhaps France’s freshest and most promising chamber music ensemble, under the direction of Daniel Kawka.

The UMZE Ensemble took its name from the New Hungarian Music Society that operated for a single season in 1911 at the initiative of Bartók and Kodály. It made its first appearance ten years ago at the Budapest Autumn Festival. For this anniversary concert the ensemble has selected from the works of two legendary musical revolutionaries of the 20th century. The first part of the concert focuses on Edgard Varèse [1883-1965], a contemporary of Bartók. The works based on unusual tone colours and rhythmic structures still sound surprisingly modern but at the time of their first performance they challenged the traditional concept of musical sound and structure more radically than any known music of the period. While Varèse questioned the nature of the substance of European music, in his compositions Mauricio Kagel [1931], the Argentinean composer living in Germany, targeted principally the views of traditional musical aesthetics.

Anyone who thinks that a horror film cannot be a work of art has presumably never seen the first creation in this genre, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s silent film made in 1921. Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror, a classic of film history, was the first and in the opinion of many never surpassed cinematic treatment of the Dracula story. The young Austrian composer-organist, Wolfgang Mitterer was inspired by the film’s dark atmosphere, the cinematic symphony of horror, to compose his own musical commentary. His piece for organ and live electronics given its first highly successful performance in 2002 is film music, but it is also an autonomous composition. Mitterer has written music for many films and is at home in a variety of musical genres: he gives solo organ recitals, regularly participates in electronic music projects, has written music for radio plays and theatre performances, and in 2003 his opera Massacre was given its first performance at the Wiener Festwochen.

How avant-garde a composer is Beethoven? Do Gyula Csapó and Ádám Kondor write classical music? Can we lose our way in the labyrinth of a work regarded as classical, and can we find the way out with the help of a contemporary composition?
Gábor Csalog and István Varga seek the answer to questions like these, or at least pose similar questions in their three-part concert. The programme of both solo and chamber pieces not only contrasts the musical past with the music of today, but also shows the limits of expression of two instruments, the piano and the cello and the possibilities for their co-operation. All the works performed convey the same message; in the words of Gyula Csapó “a composition does not have to please but creates the possibility for the listener to open up to the unknown.”

In a joint project of two legendary music institutions, the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music and New York’s Juilliard School of Music, three American and three Hungarian composer students can show their relationship to a major work of Pierre Boulez. Under the rules set for the project, works composed for the same instruments as Pierre Boulez’s Dérive 1 [1984] could be submitted, but in addition to the orchestration the works have to be linked in some way to the model. The artistic director of the New Juilliard Ensemble, Joel Sachs, one of the most influential American conductors of contemporary music, is to teach the six winning Hungarian and American compositions, and the Boulez piece to students of the Academy of Music in a master course. The programme of the concert at the Autumn Festival will be heard a few days later in New York in a performance by students of the Juilliard School of Music.