Synagogue concerts brochure

SYNAGOGUE CONCERTS BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

Budapest Festival Orchestra

Help us keep the memory of disappeared Jewish communities alive in Hungary!

In many Hungarian towns, a synagogue that has not been used as a temple in a long time still stands. They are striking mementos of the Hungarian Jewish communities lost to the Holocaust.

Each season, the Budapest Festival Orchestra visits them and organizes concerts to keep their memory alive.

We kindly ask you to consider a charitable donation so we can continue our work in the coming years.

THE BFO – AT HOME AT THE GREATEST CONCERT HALLS AND SMALLEST SYNAGOGUES ALIKE Over the past 30 years, the Budapest Festival Orchestra – considered one of the world’s top 10 orchestras – has become a regular guest at the world’s most significant and prestigious concert halls. However, for Iván Fischer and the musicians of the BFO, it is important to involve those who cannot make it to the concert halls. Each season since the summer of 2014, our Community Weeks have seen us perform in provincial synagogues which have been abandoned or no longer serve their original purposes.

SYNAGOGUE CONCERTS We fill synagogues that were laid bare by the Holocaust with life, music, and culture once again. Tunes, stories, and flavors can introduce local communities to the diversity and tolerance that used to be so typical of Hungary once upon a time.

Our concerts feature works by composers with Jewish connections, as well as klezmer tunes. After the concert, we offer traditional poppy seed cake, or flódni to the members of the audience.

“Synagogues still stand in many villages and small towns which have not had Jewish inhabitants for a long time.

Some places are in ruins, while others have been turned into furniture stores or a gym.

We visit these places and give free concerts. People are curious, and the music entices them in. The orchestra plays, and afterwards a rabbi speaks about how things used to be, about how cohabitation with the Jewish community looked. With the beauty of our music and those stories, we hope to bring the memories of the former Jewish community closer to those who now live near the building.”

– Iván Fischer, founder and music director

MOVING MOMENTS “I remember playing with the children of a Jewish family in the 1940s, when I was a young boy. One day, they disappeared, and I never saw them again. Until today, I haven’t consciously thought about them or what had happened. But this has brought it all back.”

- said one audience member with tears in his eyes.

“We have two audiences for our synagogue concerts. One is the musicloving people who fill Hungary’s mostly deserted rural synagogues. The other audience is the synagogue’s late Jewish community that was killed in the Holocaust and their children who were never born. We play for them as if they still lived in peace with their neighbors today.”

- Iván Fischer, founder and music director

THE SYNAGOGUE CONCERTS IN NUMBERS

since 2014: 10 concerts 1000 visitors each year PLEASE SUPPORT THE SYNAGOGUE CONCERTS We hope you find our initiative worthy and consider a gift in support of our work. To donate, reach out to the American Friends of the Budapest Festival Orchestra which supports the American tours and educational activities of the Orchestra, and is a United States section 501(c) 3 not for profit organization.

Donations are tax deductible for US taxpayers. synagogueconcerts.com