Fanni Mákszem & Ildikó Rozsonits Presented by Liszt Academy

This series showcases the Liszt Academy’s most promising young talents, and for its third concert violinist Ildikó Rozsonits and her chamber partner, Fanni Mákszem, have put together a beautifully poetic program. Mozart’s only violin–piano sonata in a minor key is a striking work, compact yet powerful, distilling the sounds of human resignation, despair, and hope. The concert continues with Mozart again, but this time through Beethoven’s lens: a vivid set of variations on a theme from The Magic Flute. Ravel’s one-movement sonata, written in 1897, wasn’t published until 1975. The composer, who loved experimenting with unusual tones, didn’t consider it worthy of inclusion in his own catalogue, but posterity disagreed. Today the posthumous sonata appears frequently on concert programs. The evening also features Bartók’s Rhapsody No. 1, dedicated to his close chamber music partner József Szigeti. In it Bartók follows the compositional principle he described himself: “the composer learnt the musical language of rural folk so thoroughly that he can use it with the same natural mastery as a poet uses their mother tongue.”