The new House of Music is a magnificent addition to a city already teeming with beautiful and historic venues, writes Simon Broughton
MUSICAL DESTINATIONS
Last year, an extraordinary new building appeared in Budapest’s City Park, rather like a flying saucer hovering among the trees. The height of the building has deliberately been kept below the tree line and the outline of its wavy roof is dictated by the surrounding canopy – several trees actually grow through said roof. This is the Hungarian capital’s new House of Music, the creation of Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, who was picked from 168 applications in an international competition.
Inside, you’re in a transitory world as the park outside is still visible through the glass walls. The building contains two performance spaces - the larger one accommodates 320 seated and 570 standing and has windows facing onto the park, although they’re often curtained off for evening performances. There’s also a small chamber hall.
But there’s much more to the House of Music than meets the eye. Underground there’s a museum with a display about the history of European music and Hungary’s place within it – you can wear headphones which are activated according to where you are standing among the exhibits. When it comes to the local story, there’s an exploration of Hungarian folk culture and its roots in Asia; the dance house (táncház) revival; Ferenc Erkel, the first great Hungarian composer; and Bartók and Kodály pioneering the use of the phonograph to record folk music. Alongside this there are engaging sections on music notation, the invention of polyphony, the growth of musical centres across Europe, and music technology from the phonograph to the cloud. You can spend several hours here.
The performance spaces in the House of Music are modest, but Budapest has no shortage of larger venues – all of them on the eastern, Pest, side of the Danube. The most attractive concert hall for orchestral music is at the Liszt Academy, an art nouveau masterpiece dating from 1907. A larger and more contemporary hall seating 1,700 is found within the Palace of Arts (Müpa), a complex similar to London’s Southbank Centre which opened in 2005.
One of Budapest’s earliest and most spectacular halls is the Pesti Vigadó, completed in 1864. Designed by Frigyes Feszl, this ‘jewel on the Danube’ was used for balls, concerts and the signing of the unification of Buda, Óbuda and Pest in 1873. In 1875 Liszt played Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Concerto here to r
