Life at the Liszt Academy

Hello, it's me again! However this time I'm typing on a Hungarian keyboard so I bet proof-reading this post is going to take me a while... Having pledged you another post before Sunday, I then realised I actually don't have much time before then to get everything down into words! Although I don't feel ridiculously busy, I look back and notice that I've certainly squeezed a lot into the last few weeks. I also noticed I haven't told you much about studying yet so considering it's kind of the main reason I'm in Budapest, here's attempt no.2 to let you know what I've been up to;

Luckily after a few lessons I'm pleased to say I can now keep up with the pace of the BA2 Music Theory class, just about! We've covered harmonic analysis of Classical and Romantic styles of music and now we're learning how to analyse the form - binary, ternary and rondo so far. Sounds a lot like stuff we already learnt at school right? I thought so too but was proved very wrong when we used terms such as "periods" and "sentences" to describe shorter passages and even discovered mini ternary elements within a piece in ternary form - composers continue to amaze me. They are so much more intelligent than we realise when we just scratch the surface in listening to a piece!

Did I tell you students can get free tickets to ALL of the concerts held here at the Liszt Academy? Pretty cool right, so obviously I've been making the most of the opportunity. The highlight concert so far is definitely Máv Symphony orchestra when they played Dvorák symphony no.9 "New World". What a fantastic piece, especially when preceded by Elgar's cello concerto, what a wonderful evening! As we had bought tickets for this concert we had the privilege of sitting behind the stage so I rather enjoyed peering over the woodwind and brass section's shoulders to follow their music...

Piano recital

Despite the unbeatable sound of a full symphony orchestra, I've also been to a piano trio chamber concert (piano, violin, cello) and a solo piano recital as well as other orchestral works. There is certainly a strong theme of patriotism running through the concert programmes given the amount of Liszt and Bartók that is played! Kodály, Dohnányi and Ligeti also seem to be very popular and I just love how music is such a core part of the culture here, not least in the fact the concert hall is nearly always full (take note England) and there are so many streets and squares named after their composers, it makes me so happy!

Oh also, how could I forget to mention the beautiful Grand Hall and its attention to detail? I noticed during the interval of the last concert there are paintings depicting musical terms, as you can see here with "Scherzo", built into each corner for those in the balconies to enjoy! Student seats really are the best sometimes.

So last Friday we had a trumpet masterclass with Bruce Hellmers, former Principal trumpet of the Australian Opera and Ballet orchestra and fortunately for me, it was all in English hooray! I'm not sure how much some of the Hungarian students got out of it but I'm hoping they understood at least some of his expressions and the slightly odd accent... It was really nice to meet some more trumpet students anyway since I had only met my teacher's 3 other students up until then. Although I didn't play in the masterclass, I still benefited greatly from hearing other people play as everyone seems to be playing the same 2 pieces in preparation for the competition in December, myself included. I'm going to be sick of hearing the Haydn and Böhme trumpet concertos by the end of this term!

Other things at the Liszt Academy you might ask? They're all pretty cool too, I just can't go into detail about them all or we'll be here all night. Trumpet lessons are kind of important though and the delights of having 2 a week mean I tend to put in twice as much work as I normally would! They're good fun and generally consist of me playing something (not up to standard 90% of the time) followed by my teacher playing it perfectly and giving me direction to improve combined with mutual translation lessons of a variety of words! Teaching him "diaphragm" was hilarious.

Time to go and practice again and then watch the Budapest Gypsy Orchestra in concert, have a great weekend!

S x

Half of a fortnight

It's been a mixed few weeks. Don't get me wrong, I still love Budapest but I guess now I've settled into a routine the ups and downs of daily life seem more significant than they were! Having said that, an explosion right next to your university isn't exactly what you would call "normal daily life". So that was strange and pretty sad. Two police officers were injured and although it was initially thought to be a gas explosion, later theories are that a home-made bomb was the cause due to a large amount of nails found at the scene and witnesses. You can obviously read more on the media pages but that caused a bit of disruption and a less positive atmosphere over the weekend. Shame to start on a negative but I'm sure prayers for the two police officers would be appreciated.

Moving on to more cheerier topics, a highlight of last week was when my Mum and younger brother, David, came to visit! It was great to see some familiar, British faces and in between my studying I enjoyed showing them round the city I've come to know and love. On Thursday afternoon we walked up to Heroes' square and round the city park, where I went on my own first day in Budapest! As autumn is well on it's way it looked a bit different compared to during the summer. The leaves have started changing colour and there was a festival with lots of stalls selling food and agricultural things which took up most of the castle grounds! They did have some pretty adorable displays though...

Vegetable train!

With my mother on a boat in front of
parliament.

The following day we took a sight-seeing boat up the Danube, stopping off at Margít Híd (St Margaret Island) so my visitors could see the main sights of Budapest and we enjoyed a lovely lunch of Lángos - basically deep fried dough served with a variety of toppings. So unhealthy but so delicious! During their stay we also trekked up to the castle district to see Buda Castle and the wonderful view of the city and just generally had a great time catching up. Although I haven't really missed home, it's always nice to see your family again!

Since I'm doing 2 weeks in one go I'm struggling to remember everything I've done in that time so this will likely be highlights and may have another post to come shortly covering the other half/study-related parts!

Now this Saturday just gone was the 1st October. I wore shorts and sandals and had a wonderful day in the sunshine with my girl friends Ellé and Salina. Today, October 5th it was 10 degrees celsius and I had my warmest scarf and boots on. How on earth does the weather change so rapidly?! At least it's predictable. And it's not raining, unlike England. Anyhow, we went on an adventure to Óbuda Island, which required taking a suburban railway train! It's a bit further up the Danube and a lot more natural due to the lack of mainstream tourists. I even had a lovely paddle in the river, which I definitely wouldn't do in the Thames. Continuing the nature theme we then headed to Városmajor to hop on the Cog wheel tram, which took us up into the Buda hills and enabled us to reach Normafa - a fantastic viewing point with various trails leading off into the woods, it felt like we could have been deep in the countryside! I do love getting out of the city into the beautiful nature that is all around us and I'm so thankful that Budapest provides such an easy access way of doing this.

360 rooftop bar

Final thing for this post as it's getting late, I went somewhere cool on Friday night - yes, another cool place in Budapest, who would've thought? Following our Erasmus welcome meeting (including free food!) we went out to celebrate a birthday in the group and headed to the 360 rooftop bar. As the name suggests, this is a bar on a roof with a 360 degree view all the way round of Budapest. Because it was dark when we arrived, we only saw the lit up parts of the city but that was pretty cool anyway and it would be strange going to a bar in the day time, right? Sadly my phone memory has been filling up quickly so I don't have any pictures of the view but here's one of the cute set up.

Well, I've booked practice at 9am tomorrow so I'll have to shoot off for some shut-eye but I'm going to pledge another post to you before Sunday as there has been lots of musical excitement happening as well! Hope you're having a wonderful autumn.

S x

View of the Chain Bridge from
the boat.

Part of Buda Castle I hadn't seen
before.