The House of Hungarian Music has been inaugurated – PHOTOS, PROGRAMMES
In the middle of December 2021, the building of the House of Hungarian Music was finished in Budapest. For the design, the plan of Japanese star architect Sou Fujimoto was chosen from 168 entries in an open tender back in 2014.
As we wrote in our previous articles about the building, Attila Sághi, the Deputy Chief Technical Officer of Városliget Zrt., said that carrying out the plan of Fujimoto was a difficult task: in the lobby alone, there are at least thirty technical solutions that are the first of their kind in the region. In spite of it being a demanding challenge, the builders executed it perfectly.
On Saturday, 22 January, the House of Hungarian Music was finally inaugurated. The opening ceremony included a speech by Viktor Orbán, among others.
“We Hungarians are in a cultural expansion, financial crisis or not.”
Viktor Orbán (right), László Kövér (middle) and his wife, Mária Bekk. Source:
MTI/Miniszterelnöki Sajtóiroda/Benko Vivien Cher
According to Mandiner, he stressed that Europe is going through difficult times, with epidemics and waves of population migration.
“The European energy crisis is upon us, and ideological pressure from Brussels is mounting, while the political, military, economic, and cultural weight of our continent is steadily shrinking in comparison to the rest of the world,”
added Orbán in his speech.
The PM also underscored that the House of Hungarian Music is part of a huge cultural investment in the country. He said that according to the latest available data, Hungarian spending on culture is the highest in the European Union, albeit in a tie.
“Every new building is a risk, only the first glance at the finished building is reassuring.”
However, it is generally accepted that Sou Fujimoto has done an excellent job.
As MTI reported,
visitors can enjoy concerts, interactive exhibitions, creative spaces, and music education activities in the House of Hungarian Music,
said László Baán, the government commissioner for Liget Budapest, at the building’s inauguration on Saturday. The commissioner added that music is the best-known branch of Hungarian art around the world; however, the country never had a showcase of its music history, until now.
MTI also wrote that visitors to the House of Hungarian Music can hear performances, free of charge, by students of the Academy of Music in the coming days.
On top of that, an ever-busier programme of concerts, music-themed presentations, workshops, and music education activities will follow.
According to MTI, the venue’s first temporary exhibition will open in the autumn: it will be on Hungarian popular music in the decades before the change of regime. Other temporary exhibitions on the calendar also include international bands, such as the Rolling Stones.
Ticket sales for programmes at the House of Hungarian Music launched two weeks earlier, and “several thousand” have already been sold,
Baán said.
You can find all the programmes on the website of the House of Hungarian Music. Whether or not you are interested in music events or exhibitions, it is guaranteed you will find something that piques your interest.
Read alsoBudapest to become the capital of modern city centers! – PHOTOS
Source: mandiner.hu, magyarzenehaza.com, Daily News Hungary
More designs from famous Japanese and other International architects are needed. There is no architectural home grown talent in Hungary at the moment, it’s as dry as the Sahara desert in terms of innovation. The current crop of Hungarian architects just don’t seem to be able to ‘think outside the box’ with the result that all their buildings are just that, nearly identical boxes.
For those interested in this building there is an informative article in the guardian.com with the headline “Sycamore stunner: How the Hungarian House of Music swallowed a forest”. Reading that, it seems that there is anything but sweet music surrounding this “dictator’s dream leisurescape”.