conductor Zoltán Bolyky. The grandiose artistic and educational event of University of Debrecen Faculty of Music offers around 20 masterclasses and several additional professional workshops.
The University of Debrecen Faculty of Music will organize the Young Musicians' Summer Academy for the twenty-fourth time between 2 and 16 July, with the participation of high school students, university students and young music teachers. Dean Péter Lakatos highlighted at the press conference held on Thursday that the Summer Academy has great traditions not only in the Faculty, but also in Hungarian music education, and due to its past and achievements, it also has significant professional prestige internationally.
- We try to make the best of the capacity of students and teachers in the summer as well. The summer academy is an extremely important base for us, on the one hand in terms of visibility, as the Kodály Zoltán World Youth Orchestra will take the reputation of the Faculty beyond the borders of the country, and on the other hand we can also recruit students. It has happened several times that foreign students got to know our university courses at the Summer Academy and then enrolled in them. The professional work is very intensive during this period, the event creates such an international interaction that it is worth joining the program, and our current and hopefully future students can study from a lot of renowned teachers – emphasized Péter Lakatos.
Tamás Szentei, Head of the Cultural Department of the City of Debrecen, emphasized: the Young Musicians' Summer Academy is more than higher education and more than a university affair.
- It is no coincidence that the local government has been supporting the event since the beginning. Not only because the World Orchestra has been successfully working within the framework of the Summer Academy for a long time, but also because the event is accompanied by a concert series that are also aimed at the audience of Debrecen. The organizers consciously coordinated three internationally valuable events, the Summer Academy, the congress of Jeunesses Musicales International, and the Kodály Zoltán International Music Competition, which reinforce each other and offer significant professional transition. The eyes of the world are now on the University of Debrecen when it comes to young musicians, the head of department added.
At the twenty-fourth, large-scale event, a total of sixteen instrumental and vocal masterclasses, as well as four additional courses will await students arriving at the Faculty of Music, who, in addition to individual masterclasses, can also participate in chamber music and symphony orchestra work.
- Students have applied for the Summer Academy in numbers not seen in years, and based on the applications and expected number of participants, the popularity of the event is reminiscent of the pre-pandemic period. The orchestra course, for example, was so oversubscribed that an additional chamber music orchestra could have been assembled from it. We was able to win many master teachers over from abroad, which encouraged student to join the continuously expanding community of the Summer Academy. The fame of the event gets to all over the world, and the value of this must definitely be appreciated. There were always applicants from the United Kingdom, the USA and China, but this year we also have students coming from Jordan, Malaysia and Taiwan – said Judit Váradi, artistic director of the Young Musicians' Summer Academy.
In addition to the vocal course, masterclasses have been announced for violin, viola, cello, flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, percussion and piano. This year, the masterclasses are held by thirty-one excellent professors, several of whom are coming to Debrecen from abroad. Violinist Orsolya Korcsolán from Austria, cellist Ildikó Szabó from Germany, flutist Dóra Seres from Denmark, oboist Sanja Romic from Serbia, saxophonist Gerald Preinfalk from Austria, percussionist Marc Strobel from Germany, pianist Giovanni Bertolazzi from Italy, pianist Artem Yasynskyy from Germany, and performer Virág Dezső from the Netherlands will come to the Faculty of Music and hold masterclasses for students.
In addition to the instrumental and vocal masterclasses, there will also be additional courses. Performer Virág Dezső will combine the worlds of modern mime, dance, instant composition and music with her performance titled The Musicality of Movement. Nikoletta Földessy, Alexander Technique teacher and somatic instructor, will show how to tune the human body similarly to a musical instrument. Karolina Kósa, director of the Institute of Behavioral Sciences of the University of Debrecen, will introduce students to the stress-reducing breathing control technique, and László Stachó, psychologist and musicologist, will hold a musical attention training.
The Kodály Zoltán World Youth Orchestra will be formed this year as well, and this time it will not be led and prepared for the concerts by the pianist and conductor Tamás Vásáry awarded by Kossuth Prize, but by conductor Zoltán Bolyky, an artist-teacher of the University of Debrecen Faculty of Music. The Faculty of Music will pay tribute to the legendary founding conductor Tamás Vásáry by presenting a documentary about him. The rehearsal period will start on 2 July, and the orchestra will give its first concert at 7 pm on 14 July in the Great Hall of the Kölcsey Centre in Debrecen. The orchestra will take the stage in Budapest, in the Ceremonial Hall of Pesti Vigadó on 15 July, and will finally perform in Vienna on 16 July. The program of the orchestra: Romeo and Juliet - Overture Fantasy by Tchaikovsky, Carmen-suite No. 1. by Bizet, and Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky-Ravel.
As part of the Summer Academy, the concert series Musical Evenings in the Great Forest will be held from 5 July, featuring the professors teaching at the masterclasses and invited artists, but in addition to them, the most successful students of the masterclasses also have the opportunity to perform on these occasions.
Press Center - BZ