KELEMEN QUARTET (Mađarska)
Barnabás KELEMEN, violina – Katalin KOKAS, violina
Gábor HOMOKI, viola – László FENYÖ, violončelo
Aleksandar MADŽAR, klavir

Programme:
J. HAYDN:
String quartet in D major, Op.20 no.4
R. SCHUMANN: String quartet in A major, Op.41 no.3
***
A.DVOŘÁK:
Piano quintet No.2 in A major, Op.81 (1887/88)

Tickets are available at: Musical Youth of Novi Sad (Katolicka porta street 2, tel. 021/452-344).
Buy on-line tickets here

KELEMEN QUARTET, Hungary
Founded in Budapest in 2010, the Quartet has rapidly gained a reputation as one of the most exciting young string quartets. Its first success came in 2014 already when they won the first prize at the prestigious Premio Borciani Competition, which is one of the most significant international competitions for such ensembles that has been held since 1987 in the Italian city of Regio Emilia every third year (the birth place of the fist violinist of a famous Italian quartet). A year after that the ensemble won the second prize, the audience prize and the Musica Viva Grand Prize at the 6th Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition. Being obviously one of the greatest discoveries at that time, whose playing “lit a firework of emotions”, the Kelemen Quartet received the first prize at the Beijing International Music Competition in the same year (2011). The year that followed brought them the victory at the International Sándor Végh String Quartet Competition in Budapest where they attracted the interest of many reputable musicians they continued to learn with and co-operate in the music sense. They include Zoltán Kocsis, Péter Komlós, Miklós Perényi, Günter Pichler (member of the Alban Berg Quartet), Ferenc Rados, András Schiff and Gábor Takács-Nagy. At their first USA tour the Dallas News highlighted “the most electrifying string-quartet concert in recent memory” and described it as “highly flexible, vivid and powerful ensemble”. The audience still remembers their debuts at the Philharmonie Berlin, Palace of Arts, and Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, Schloß Esterhazy in Eisenstadt, Amici della Musica in Florence, Wigmore Hall, Narodni Dom in Maribor, Auditorium du Louvre in Paris, and at the festivals in Lockenhaus, Lohisoitto, Kaposvár and for West Cork Music Festival (Ireland), as well as tours to Australia and New Zealand, India and Mexico. Not less important are their last year’s debuts at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Bozar in Brussels, concert in Geneva, in Hamburg with the pianist Menahem Pressler, in Milan at the Società del Quartetto, in Turin, Venice, at the Musikverein Vienna, and at the festivals in Ascona and Ravenna. There are also the unforgettable debuts of the Quartet (season of 2015/2016) at the Carnegie Hall in New York and Konzerthaus in Berlin, Philharmonie Cologne and at the Colmar Festival. The return invitations also came from their home town of Budapest, Florence, Indianapolis, Reggio Emilia, Venice, London, as well as for the Italian and Australian tour. The Quartet’s debut CD has been released by the label Hunnia in 2012 featuring works by Bartók and Mozart.
The list of national string artists that the Kelemen Quartet regularly co-operates with includes Nicolas Altstaedt, Joshua Bell, Joseph Lendvay, Maxim Rysanov, Ákos Takács as well as great world pianists such as Menahem Pressler and Ferenc Rados, and until recently Zoltán Kocsis. All members of the Kelemen Quartet are prizewinning musicians equally appreciated and favoured as soloists and chamber musicians.
We met their first violinist Barnabás Kelemen at the last year’s Nomus as an exceptional soloist with orchestra. Katalin Kokas, violin professor at the Franz Liszt Music Academy (since 2004), is the founder and art director of the Kaposvár Chamber Music Festival, the leading festival of that kind in Hungary. She has been the participant of similar prestigious events in Austria, Great Britain, Holland, Switzerland, and Finland and in her Quartet she often plays viola. She has received the first prizes at several great violin competitions in Hungary. She recorded six independent CDs and uses Stradivari violin “Cecilia” from 1697 (owned by the Hungarian Golden Museum) and Luigi Fabrice viola from 1863.
The youngest member of the Quartet, the violist Gabor Homoki (1989), until recently the student of Katalin Kokas, Barnabás Kelemen and Miklos Szenthhelyi has also learnt and plays two instruments and he has been connected with the ensemble since its establishment. In parallel he is also the concertmaster of a baroque chamber orchestra Concerto Armonico Budapest. He plays the Januarius Gaggliano’s violin from 1771 and Luigi Fabrice’s viola from 1863. The best known to the Novi Sad audience since they have remained enchanted by both his performances at Nomus and as soloist with Vojvodina Symphony Orchestra, Laszlo Fenÿo (1975) has belonged to the narrowest world cello elite since his victory at the prestigious Pablo Casals International Competition in the German city of Kronberg in 2004. His perfect technique and emotional expression, irrespective of the genre and style, have attracted the members of a young quartet and being invited by them Fenÿo joined the quartet during the season of 2014/2015 having become its ”youngest” member. Along with respectable international performing career he is also involved in teaching as a cello professor at the Hochschule für Musik in Karlsruhe. He plays a Matteo Goffriller instrument from 1695.

ALEKSANDAR MADŽAR, piano, Belgium
“The imagination of his playing is reflected in the programme selection – all this speaks about the artist whose horizons are much wider than it is the case with many of his peers … truly exceptional“ – The Guardian
Being born in Belgrade in 1968, Aleksandar Madžar started learning how to play the piano with Gordana Malinović and after that he studied in the class of Arba Valdme at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade. In the period from 1987 to 1989 he attended master classes held by Eliso Virsaladze in Moscow, Edouard Mirzoian at Strasbourg Conservatory and by Daniel Blumenthal in Brussels. He is currently the professor at the Royal Flemish Conservatoire in Brussels and at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Bern.
Madžar was the winner at the competitions in Genève (1986) and Bolcano (Ferruccio Busoni International Competition, 1989), and he won the third prize in Leeds (1996).
When he won the third place at the Leeds Piano Competition the critic of the Times Magazine, Gerald Larner, also characterised Madžar as “the most imaginative artist among the finalists”. After that success, the artist’s career has been developing rapidly primarily at the British musical scene where he was a highly sought-after soloist who performed with the Royal Philharmonic, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Scotland and Belfast, BBC Philharmonic, and Scottish Chamber Orchestra. He has also held concerts around Europe and Asia under the baton of Paavo Berglund, Ivan Fischer, Paavo Järvi, Carlos Kalmar, John Nelson, Libor Pesek, André Previn, Andris Nelson, and later on of Marcello Viotti.
Aleksandar Madžar has also performed as soloist with the Philharmonie Berlin, European Chamber Orchestra, Cologne and Frankfurt Radio Orchestras, Czech Philharmonic, Irish Chamber Orchestra, Belgrade Philharmonic, National Orchestra of Belgium, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Stuttgart Philharmonic, and Seoul Philharmonic under the baton of Myung-whun Chung. His partners in chamber music performing were the violinist Ilya Gringolts (with whom he played Beethoven’s violin sonatas at Nomus 2007, and at festivals in Verbier, Kyoto and South America) and Juliane Banse with whom he performed in Bilbao, Valencia and Lisbon. His debut at the International Miami Festival during the season of 2007/08 brought him a fascinating success and the following two seasons brought him, in addition to other engagements, the solo concerts at different continents, in particular in China, but also in Tokyo and Cardiff, and finally the co-operation with the Dutch violinist of the Russian origin, Lisa Ferschtman. They had joint concerts in Holland (The Hague) and Amsterdam Koncertgebau. Madžar’s latest big Australian tour during September 2017 with an exceptional German-French cellist of younger generation, Nicolas Altstaedt at Musica Viva Festival was highly acclaimed. It was a brilliant continuation of inspirational co-operation of two artists that started at the same event in Sidney, in 2015. For this second one they prepared two voluminous programmes of music written in a wide style range, from large sonatas by Brahms, Debussy, Shostakovich and Barber up to the works by Nadia Boulanger and a new work by a young Australian composer Jakub Jankowski.
Aleksandar Madžar performed at numerous recitals in Europe, America and Asia, among which we can mention the concerts in Berlin, Paris, London, Brussels, Florence, Amsterdam, The Hague, Milan, Hamburg, Munich, Edinburgh, Prague, Boston, and Belgrade. He has been on tours to Japan, China, USA and Columbia, participated at numerous festivals such as Bemus and Nomus, Ivo Pogorelić Festival, festivals in Bad Kissingen, Schleswig-Holstein, Bad Wörishoffen, Verbier, Ruhr, Davos, Salzburg, Aldeburgh, Luzern, and Delft…
He has recorded for the German label BMG/Classic FM (Chopin’s piano concerts with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and Dmitry Kitaenko), French Arion and Swedish Intim Musik.