Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra

The story of the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra began in 1923, with the formation of the Metropolitan Orchestra, which rapidly became one of the pillars of Hungarian musical life.

The Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra was founded by Dezső Bor who was its chief conductor for fifteen years. After the war, Ferenc Fricsay and László Somogyi were appointed as principal conductors. During this era, Otto Klemperer also conducted forty concerts, while another regular guest was Antál Doráti. These years saw a host of foreign guests working with the orchestra. 1952 proved to be a turning point in the orchestra’s history when János Ferencsik was appointed principal conductor: it proved to be a match made in heaven. In the 1960's, a new wave of guest conductors took up invitations to conduct the musicians and their names read like a Who's Who of the profession: Ernest Ansermet, Antál Doráti, Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel, Sir John Barbirolli, Leopold Stokowski, Claudio Abbado and Christoph von Dohnányi. Great soloists were invited too, musicians of the calibre of Sviatoslav Richter, Yehudi Menuhin, Anja Silja, János Starker and Ruggiero Ricci.

With János Ferencsik’s death, an entire era in the orchestra’s history closed. In 1987, an ideal replacement for Ferencsik was found, in the person of the Japanese conductor Ken-Ichiro Kobayashi, who directed the orchestra for ten years. The next major change for the orchestra occurred in 1998 when it was renamed the Hungarian National Philharmonic and together with the Hungarian National Choir, was nominated as supreme national basic institutions.