Choral music has been the fundament of Western music from its origins. For centuries the euphony of choruses has echoed through churches and concert halls to glorify God, emperors and kings.

In Hungary the pillar of choral singing is the National Chorus. This week it will give two concerts featuring the music of two of the pillars of Western music, Beethoven and Bach.

On Saturday, July 17 it will perform Beethoven's entire incidental music to Kotzebue's play König Stephan (King Stephen, Hungary's First Benefactor), op 117. The National Chorus will be joined by the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra and conducted by maestro Zoltán Kocsis.

The concert will be held at 7pm in the Beethoven Park of Martonvásár, the home of the Brunsvik family, where Beethoven used to go for summer vacations in the first years of the 19th century.

Martonvásár is about 30km from downtown Budapest on the M7 highway towards Lake Balaton.

Beethoven quickly wrote König Stephan in 1811 on commission for the opening of a new imperial theater in Pest, an occasion of national patriotic significance.

Kotzebue's play deals with Hungary's founder king, but is also a rather transparent aggrandizement of the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz.

Beethoven's music – consisting of an overture, male, female and mixed choruses, marches and melodramas (music to accompany spoken text) – is not considered his finest of this period (he wrote the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies directly afterwards), but it does help to complete the portrait of the composer at this time in his life.

There can be no question of the quality of Bach's monumental Mass in B Minor, however, which the National Chorus will perform with the Weiner-Szász Chamber Symphony Orchestra in the historic Matthias Church on Castle Hill tomorrow (Friday, July 16) at 8pm.

Mátyás Antal will conduct.

Unlike the Beethoven composition, it is not known why Bach constructed this huge edifice, parts of which could not be performed within the framework of the Lutheran liturgy.

The B Minor Mass would appear to be Bach's ecumenical testimony to his deep Christian faith and a summary o fall the myriad compositional techniques which he had honed throughout his life.

Without a doubt it is one of the finest and most inspiring choral works ever written, and the National Chorus is precisely the choir which can meet such an artistic challenge.

Information
Bach: B Minor Mass
National Chorus, Weiner-Szász Chamber Orchestra, Antal
Saturday, July 16, 8 p.m.
Matthias Church

Beethoven: King Stephen, op. 117,
Consecration of the House
Hungarian National Philharmonic and National Chorus, Kocsis
Saturday, July 17, 7 p.m.
Beethoven Park, Martonvásár

Kevin Shopland
(The Budapest Sun, July 15, 2004)