Pannonhalma Festival 2025
18.-25. August 2025

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It is with great anticipation that we are looking forward to our first residency in the wonderful location of the Pannonhalma Archabbey, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996. Invited to the Arcus Temporum Festival by COE’s long-standing friends Denés Várjon and Izabella Simon, artistic directors of the festival, we will perform works by Mendelssohn and Jörg Widmann, who will himself perform alongside the COE strings. The concerts will take place on 22nd August, on 23rd August at 7pm and 10pm and on 24th August.

The COE’s first concert with Denés dates back to 2007 at the Lucerne Festival under the direction of Heinz Holliger. On that occasion, the programme had included Veress’s Piano Concerto. In February 2020, just before the first COVID lockdown, the COE, Denés and his wife Izabella Simon embarked on a tour to Hungary, Belgium and the Netherlands, performing repertoire which included Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 and Mozart’s Piano Concerto for 2 Pianos in E flat. The concerts also featured COE Leader Lorenza Borrani and COE Principal Flute Clara Andrada. We reconvened in October 2022 for two concerts with Denés, this time with violinist Veronika Eberle at the Esterházy Palace in Eisenstadt and at Denés’s chamber music festival Kamara.hu at the Liszt Academy in Budapest.

„The Arcus Temporum Festival in Pannonhalma is a special oasis not only in Hungary, but also in the international music festival scene. For us, it is a dream come true to be the artistic directors of this year’s festival and to be able to create a musical programme inspired by the spirit of the place. We have chosen two brilliant German composers, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Jörg Widmann, separated by a century and a half, yet linked by countless links through the arc of time. As a performer, Jörg Widmann is one of the world’s greatest and most authentic interpreters of Mendelssohn, and as a composer, he is a constant source of inspiration for the creative work of German Romanticism. A kaleidoscopic diversity characterises the programme. Through the inexhaustible world of lyric literature, string symphonies, piano works and chamber music, we want to meet our audience and experience faith, friendship and togetherness through the vibrations of music.“ (Izabella Simon – Dénes Várjon, Artistic directors for music)

Pannonhalma is one of these unique locations where history, spirituality, music, literature and art come together and it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996, one thousand years after the Benedictine monastery’s foundation. The monastery gently dominates the Pannonian landscape in western Hungary and had a major role in the diffusion of Christianity in medieval Central Europe. The Archabbey of Pannonhalma and its environment (the monastic complex, the Basilica, educational buildings, the Chapel of Our Lady, the Millennium Chapel, the botanical and herbal gardens) outstandingly exemplifies the characteristic location, landscape connections, original structure, design and a thousand year history of a Benedictine monastery. The community of monks still functions today on the basis of the Rule of St. Benedict, and sustains with a unique continuity one of the living centres of European culture.

The video below from the UNESCO website gives more details about the history of the Archabbey and retraces the story of the unique Pannonhalma Rizling (or Riesling), a delicious white wine, favourite of the Hungarian royal family, whose production was jeopardised by the Communist regime from 1949 when all wine production in the country was nationalised. Today, the Benedictine monks at Pannonhalma have successfully revived the Abbey’s vineyard thanks to a programme involving replanting the vineyards and opening a state-of-the-art winery in 2003.

The duo of Dénes Várjon and Izabella Simon is quite different from most of the „traditional“ piano duos. The musicians, husband and wife, give relatively few concerts and although they, too, perform most of the pieces of the core repertoire for piano four hands and two pianos, they have a special interest in rarely played works. In addition to their high artistic quality, this makes their concerts almost always a special event.
Among the most important projects of the past few years we find the repetition of the „farewell concert“ given by Béla Bartók and Ditta Pásztory in Budapest before their emigration to the US, performances of the double-concerto „Hommage a Paul Klée“ by Sándor Veress, of Beethoven’s Great Fugue in an arrangement for piano four hands by the composer himself, and of Mahler’s Symphony No.1 transcribed for piano four hands by Bruno Walter.
The first CD of the piano duo, „The Great Fugue“ was released in 2017 by the Hungaroton label: this featured works by Schumann, Mozart, Schubert and Beethoven.
The duo has performed, among others, in New York’s Carnegie Hall, Zurich’s Tonhalle, London’s Wigmore Hall and at the festivals of Salzburg, Schwetzingen, Bonn (Beethovenfest) and Marlboro. The two pianists are co-artistic directors of „kamara.hu”, Hungary’s leading chamber music festival.

Read Denés Várjon’s biography here.

Read Izabella Simon’s biography here.

Jörg Widmann is considered one of the most versatile and intriguing artists of his generation. The 2024/25 season sees him appear in all facets of his work, as a clarinettist, conductor and composer, including his second season as Principal Guest Conductor of NDR Radiophilharmonie and Creative Partner of Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, Artistic Partner of Riga Sinfonietta and Associated Conductor of Münchener Kammerorchester.

Following recent important conducting projects with orchestras such as Berliner Philharmoniker and Symphony Orchestra of the Bavarian Radio, in the 2024/25 season Jörg Widmann appears with Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan or the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona. Other highlights include his residency with Stavanger Symphony Orchestra and the Spanish premiere of his work Danse macabre performed by the National Orchestra of Spain in Madrid under his baton. 2025 sees Widmann make his debuts at the helm of BBC National Orchestra of Wales and NHK Symphony Orchestra for the orchestra’s Music Tomorrow series, the programme of which includes the Japanese premieres of Danse macabre and the trumpet concerto Towards Paradise with soloist Håkan Hardenberger. Re-invitations take him to Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Irish Chamber Orchestra and Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa amongst others.

Read Jörg Widmann’s full biography here.