Thursday 4 November 2021, 18.30

PIANISTS FROM UZHHOROD
RECITAL BY JÓZSEF ÖRMÉNY AND IRÉN SELELJO

Synagogue - Ungvári Filharmónia (10 Teatralyna Square, Uzhhorod)

Programme:

Ludwig van Beethoven: B flat major Sonata Op. 22
Maurice Ravel: Menuet sur le nom d’Haydn 
Claude Debussy: Hommage à Haydn  
Péter Eötvös: Dances of the Brush-footed Butterfly

INTERVAL

Franz Schubert – Ferenc Liszt: Soirées de Vienne – valse-caprice No. 6 (S.427/6)
Claude Debussy: Suite bergamasque
István Márton: Remembrance
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: D major Rondo K. 485

Franz Schubert: D major Rondo D. 608 – for four hands

Performed by:
Irén Seleljo – piano
József Örmény – piano

Two outstanding pianists from Uzhhorod, from two generations, József Örmény and Irén Seleljo, give a joint recital in their home town, featuring a selection of music spanning 200 years. In this programme which includes Classical, Romantic, 20th century, and contemporary works, dances have a particularly important role. Beethoven’s four-movement B flat major sonata completed in 1800 has a Minuetto as its third movement, and the second item in the concert is also a minuet, written by French composer Ravel in honour of the great master of Viennese classicism, Joseph Haydn (who taught Beethoven for a short while). Ravel’s slightly senior contemporary Debussy, who was like him active at the musically crucial turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a giant of a composer, also wrote a piece in homage to Haydn: a waltz. Both of these musical gems include the melody formed from the letters of Haydn’s name. After the minuet and the waltz, we shall hear another dance: this time a dance of butterflies. Péter Eötvös, one of the greatest composers of our time, saw the motion of these small creatures in his own garden, and based this enchanting piece on them. It was premiered in 2012.

Ferenc Liszt, who as a pianist liked to popularize composers whose work he admired, made transcriptions of works by nearly one hundred composers, including a particularly large number of pieces by Schubert. We shall hear another dance, a waltz from the series Soirées de Vienne. The most famous movement of Debussy’s four-movement cycle Suite bergamesque completed in 1905 is the third, Claire de lune (Moonlight), but equally worthy of attention are the Menuet and Passepied, which evoke Baroque dances. The inclusion of István Márton’s piece Remembrance in the concert is a way of paying homage to the memory of one of the most notable composer-pianist-teachers in Subcarpathia in the 20th century. István Márton, who died in 1996, did an extraordinary amount for concert life in Uzhhorod. The recital closes with two rondos composed in D major. Mozart’s solo composition from 1786 borrows a graceful theme from Johann Christian Bach, whom he greatly admired. Finally we shall hear the rondo by Schubert, written when he was 21, for four hands, thus the concert ends with both pianists performing together.

Performers

Irén Seleljo was born in 1987 in Uzhhorod, Transcarpathia. She began her piano studies with her mother Alexandra Seleljo at the music school in Bonyhád, and continued her studies at the Szent István Király Secondary School of Music in Budapest, in the class of Erzsébet Kőrösiné Belák. In 2006 she was accepted to the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, where she continued her studies with Attila Némethy and István Gulyás. In 2008 she won a scholarship to Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson, USA), where her piano teacher was Jeremy Denk. In 2011, after obtaining her Master’s degree in Piano and Teaching, she was admitted to the Vienna Conservatory Wien Privatuniversität, Vienna, to study piano accompaniment with Denise Benda.

Her love of chamber music was evident from an early age and still plays an important role in her life. She currently performs as a member of various ensembles (Seleljo Duo, Duonarchie, Trio di Vienna). Her repertoire ranges from baroque to contemporary music, with several national and international premieres to her name.

In recent years Irén Seleljo has performed in Austria, Slovenia, Italy, Spain, France, Romania, Slovenia and Chile. In 2013 she released her first recording, Art of Duo (on the Col legno label), on which she recorded the classics of the saxophone repertoire with the Austrian saxophonist Gerald Preinfalk. Many of Seleljo Duo's concerts have been recorded by Bartók Radio. Irén Seleljo currently lives in Vienna and teaches at the Musik und Kunst Privatuniversität der Stadt Wien and the Kunstuniversität Graz.

József Ormény was born in 1960 in Uzhhorod. After graduating from the Mykola Lysenko Lviv State Conservatory, he continued his studies at the Tchaikovsky State Conservatory in Moscow under the guidance of Professor Yevgeny Malinin. He is currently head of the piano department at the Mykola Lysenko Lviv National Conservatory.

He is an Artist of Merit in Ukraine, and he has been awarded the Revutsky and Lyatoshinsky State Prizes, the ‘Fryderyk’ Prize (Poland, 1997) and the Polish Prize for Culture in 2014.

He is active in promoting twentieth-century and contemporary music and has performed in Ukraine, Poland, Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, Azerbaijan, Moldova and Russia.

József Ormény has performed in venues such as St. Laurens Hall and Chapelle historique du Bon-Pasteur (Canada), the concert halls of the Philharmonie Cologne, the Philharmonie Kiel, the Staatstheater Cottbus (Germany), Teatru Manoel (Malta), the Philharmonic concert halls of Warsaw, Lublin and Krakow (Poland), and the Philharmonic halls of Lviv and Kiev. He is a regular guest at prestigious festivals.

He has collaborated with conductors such as Volodymyr Sirenko, Mykola Diadiura, Roman Rewakowicz, Tadeusz Wojciechowski, Wojciech Michniewski, Zygmunt Rychert, Mirosław Błaszczak, Jan Krenz, Stanisław Skrowaczewski, Saulius Sondeckis, Yuriy Simonov, and Brian Schembri. He has also collaborated with musicians and ensembles such as Albetro Lysy, Orest Shurhot, Olha Pasichnyk, Valeriy Buymister, Kwartet Śląski, and the DAFO Quartet.