All throughout 2022, the centenary of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) has been celebrated worldwide. As part of the series of Ulysses100 events in Hungary, the Hungarian James Joyce Society, in collaboration with the Embassy of Ireland to Hungary, commemorates the occasion with a memorial concert. Joyce’s involvement with music was proverbial: he played several instruments, as a young man he studied singing for the operatic stage. His literary works are a rich web of musical motifs, and the intense musicality of his prose is attested by critic and reader alike. It is only appropriate that the closing event of Ulysses100 will be a musical tribute to the author and his modernist classic.

HE Ronan Gargan, Ambassador of Ireland to Hungary, addresses the audience

Presenter: Ferenc Takács, President of the Hungarian James Joyce Society

Musical Programme:

Mátyás Seiber: Ulysses, A Cantata for Tenor Solo, Choir and Orchestra (1947 – I. movement: "The Heaventree"
Christian Reinert tenor, American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leon Botstein. Audio from live recording)
A disciple of Zoltán Kodály, Mátyás Seiber (1905-1960), the Hungarian-born and, from 1935 onwards, London-based composer was among the first to celebrate, in serious musical form, James Joyce and his Ulysses.

Katarzyna Brochocka: Chamber Music (2009) – song cycle for voice, double bass and piano based on the poems of James Joyce
1.) Poem XVII (Because your voice was at my side I gave him pain)
2.) Poem XXVIII (Gentle lady, do not sing Sad songs about the end of love)
3.) Poem XXXIV (Sleep now, O sleep now, O you unquiet heart!)
Judit Rajk - contralto
Zsolt Fejérvári - double bass
Dávid Báll - piano

W. A. Mozart: Fantasia in C minor, K. 475
Gábor Csalog - piano

Mozart in James Joyce’s Ulysses
kommentár: Ferenc Takács commentary
Gábor Csalog - piano

Mozart és Dublin
W. A. Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat major, K. 482
III. movement – In Dublin’s Fair City...

Don Giovanni on Bloomsday
– tracing motifs of the opera in the text of Ulysses –
Là ci darem la mano… Vorrei, e non vorrei (Act I, Scene ix)
Don Giovanni, a cenar teco m’invitasti (Act II, Scene xv)

INTERMISSION

Ádám Kondor: Schroeder’s Resurrection piano four hands - world premier
András Németh - piano
Krisztián Andor - piano