Tamás Palfalvi, trumpet
Palfalvi sets new standards for trumpet playing with a breathtaking proficiency that seems almost acrobatic at times. Even more striking are the virtuoso’s groundbreaking programmatic ideas.’ – MDR Figaro, October 2015
His one of a kind technical skills aside, 25-year-old Hungarian Tamás Pálfalvi already stands out as one of the most visionary and innovative trumpet players of today.
His enormous virtuosity, stage presence and extraordinary musical concept won him first place at the Fanny-Mendelssohn-Förderpreis, a German competition that was created to reward not only the performance of young musicians, but also their conceptual skills and creativity. Additionally he was awarded with the WEMAG Soloist Award at Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
His debut CD Agitato, accompanied by the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra and released in September 2015 by Berlin Classics, is further reference of his versatility. Works by Vivaldi, Telemann and Händel are effortlessly intertwined with contemporary works by Ligeti, Kagel and Dubrovay. The CD was met with rave reviews internationally such as Bayerische Rundfunk listing it as CD of the Month and Norddeutsche Rundfunk as CD of the Week. Upcoming highlights include his performances at Konzerthaus Berlin, Frauenkirche in Dresden, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the Chosen Vale Trumpet Seminar in New Hampshire, Gezeitenfestival, Germany as well as performances with the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra and the Bayerische Kammerorchester.

Tamás has performed at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, Suntory Hall and Kitara Hall in Japan, NCPA Beijing, Shanghai Grand Theatre, Hong Kong Cultural Center, Harvard’s Sanders Theater and Müpa Budapest, as well as festivals such as Pacific Music Festival, Bard Music Festival, Bologna Festival and the New Opera Days Ostrava. He has played under the baton of Fabio Luisi, Christoph Eschenbach, Peter Eötvös, Matthias Pintscher and Zoltán Kocsis and with orchestras such as Royal Philharmonic, American Symphony Orchestra, The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Hamburger Camerata and Mecklenburger Kammersolisten.

Born in Hungary in 1991, Tamás took up trumpet lessons with István Szabó at the age of 8 and joined the Leó Weiner Conservatory of Music in Budapest in 2005, where he studied under Gábor Huszár. In 2009, he was awarded a scholarship for Bard College in New York, where he studied unter Carl Albach until 2012. He then returned to Budapest to study at Franz Liszt Music Academy under Gábor Boldoczki, where he received his Master’s degree in May 2016.
Tamás has received numerous prizes, such as the National Trumpet Competition at the age of 15 as well as the Junior Prima Prize, the most important recognition for young musicians in Hungary. He was the first trumpet player to win the Bard College Concerto Competition. Further distinctions include awards from the Chicago Brass Festival and several competitions across European cities such as Prague, Chieri, Cluj Napoca and Brno.
Tamás performs on Adams instruments and has developed a new design for the C-trumpet together with the company. They are currently working on a new e-Flat trumpet. Besides the classical trumpet he also performs on Flugelhorn and Baroque trumpet.

Orquesta Joven de Extremadura
The Extremadura Youth Orchestra (OJEX, its acronym in Spanish) is a pedagogical project impulsed by the Extremadura Council, through the Fundación Orquesta de Extremadura. Its aim is to expand the orchestral training of music students, preparing them for their professional future. OJEX began its journey in 2004.

It was created to provide music students a professional apprenticeship with a high technical and professional qualification. That is, the extension and improvement of their knowledge, through the study and practice of the symphonic repertoire and that in their centers of origin can not to work.

The encouragement of symphonic music, especially among youth, motivates the staging of music played by young people who undoubtedly attract their friends and other young people to concerts. This symphonic music does not have the same appeal interpreted by professors of recognized prestige, but of greater age, as by the members of the Young Orchestra of Extremadura, as we have been able to verify in the concerts different concerts offered.

During this period of time OJEX has achieved the objectives and quality levels that inspired its creation, as it is reflected in the concerts it has performed. With the illusion placed on the future, as a training need, and as a stimulus for our young people, the work carried out by the Youth Orchestra of Extremadura is maintained.

Currently, OJEX has a workforce of 103 musicians, ranging in age from 16 years to 25 years.

Gianluca Marcianò, conductor
For the biography of Gianluca Marcianò, please refer to the concert of Wednesday, February 15

Carl Reinecke (1824 – 1910)
Overture Zenobia

Nowadays Carl Reinecke is remembered in musical circles for his cadenzas to the concertos of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, while a wider public may perhaps know the flute sonata Undine, yet in the second half of the nineteenth century he was respected as one of the most influential and versatile musicians of the time, and as one of the most highly esteemed composers.
Born on 23rd June 1824, in the then Danish town of Altona, now a part of Hamburg. The year was the year of birth of Bruckner, of Cornelius and of Smetana. The son of a teacher of music, he was taught by his father and at the age of seven began to compose, making his first public appearance as pianist at the age of twelve. He undertook his first concert tour in 1843 as accompanist to the violinist H.W. Ernst, travelling to Copenhagen, where he met the composer Niels Gade. In the autumn of the same year he went to Leipzig for the first time, and there met Mendelssohn, the violinist Ferdinand David, Hiller and Schumann. Further concert tours in North Germany led, in 1846, to his appointment as Court Pianist in Denmark, where he remained until 1848.
After retirement from the conservatory, Reinecke devoted his time to composition, resulting in almost three hundred published works. He wrote several operas (none of which are performed today) including König Manfred. During this time, he frequently made concert tours to England and elsewhere. His piano playing belonged to a school in which grace and neatness were characteristic, and at one time he was probably unrivalled as a Mozart player and an accompanist. In 1904 at the age of 80, he made recordings of seven works playing on piano roll for the Welte-Mignon Company, making him the earliest-born pianist to have his playing preserved in any format. He subsequently made a further 14 for the Aeolian Company’s “Autograph Metrostyle” piano roll visual marking system and an additional 20 for the Hupfeld DEA reproducing piano roll system. He died at 85 in Leipzig.

Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778 – 1837)
Trumpet Concerto in E-Flat major
The Concerto opens with a classic double exposition in which the orchestra presents two major themes. Many composers gave new melodies to the solo instrument; here, Hummel’s trumpet echoes with a slightly varied version of the orchestra’s first theme but offers a different second theme.
Although the Classical concerto almost always sported a slower central movement, composers for wind and brass instruments were particularly intent on demonstrating the lyrical and emotive capabilities of the instruments. Hummel’s central Andante is in a languorous A minor, almost operatic in mood. The second part is even more soulful and shows off the chromatic qualities of the valve trumpet.
The Andante leads directly into the Rondo, which immediately displays the soloist’s rapid staccato abilities as it stutters into the rondo theme. Staccato playing is a most difficult technique and becomes the main feature of the movement as a whole.

Karl Goldmarck (1830-1915)
The queen of Sheba overture, ballet music
Goldmark’s only violin concerto is a testament to his love for earlier masters, Mendelssohn in particular. It was composed in 1877, just a year before the violin concertos by Brahms and Tchaikovsky, works that were once no more beloved or frequently played than this piece. It is a fine and often inspired work, and its absence from orchestral programs today is unjustified. Although it begins stiffly with a sturdy marching theme, once the violin enters, Goldmark begins to spin the kind of irresistible lyric song that fills The Queen of Sheba and his later operas. Goldmark was a violinist himself, so the solo writing is particularly natural and felicitous, even in the showiest passages. The slow movement, hushed and eloquent, is a Mendelssohnian song without words, ever-so-slightly colored by Goldmark’s enthusiasm for Wagner’s harmonic language. The colorful finale, dancelike, virtuosic, and endlessly singing, may well have been in the mind of Goldmark’s student Sibelius when he wrote the “polonaise” that concludes his own violin concerto more than a quarter-century later.