From Csardas to Waltz

The Budapest Gypsy Symphony Orchestra is famous both in its native Hungary and around the world. Its prestige is underlined by its inclusion in the so-called Invisible Museum of the Hungarian Spirit, its status as national intangible cultural heritage and, last but not least, its appearance in Guinness World Records as the largest gypsy orchestra in the world. Although this year marks the fortieth anniversary of the first concerts by the Budapest Gypsy Symphony Orchestra, founded following the death of the »king of the gypsy violin« Sándor Járóka, the orchestra has never looked only to the past. Its mission is actually based on intergenerational transfer and on reviving characteristic forms of music-making modelled on the customs of the Roma people. In this way it also ensures the continuity of Roma musical creativity and the performance of this spirited, often highly rhythmic and danceable and always virtuosic music in the symphonic medium, at the highest level. As may be seen from the programme of August’s concert in Ljubljana, the orchestra’s artistic activity is founded on preserving Roma musical tradition, which it successfully interweaves with folk song and the European musical legacy. Some of the greatest composers of past centuries – including Franz Liszt, Béla Bartók, Johannes Brahms, Georges Bizet, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Zoltán Kodály and the entire Strauss family – frequently incorporated into their own compositions a musical idiom which they believed coincided with the melos or inner melody of this nomadic culture.