Pannonhalma Art Festival

After a gap year, Arcus Temporum Festival is organized again in the framework of Saint Martin’s year between the 26^th -28^th of August in the Arrchabbey. Its motto is same as the motto of the memorial year: “We are in community”. However this community links many-many planes. Two old fellow warrior musicians, Keller András and Rácz Zoltán have community with Pannonhalma as the artistic directors of the festival.  A classical composer from the past, Joseph Haydn has community with six composers from the present: Kurtág György, celebrating his 90^th birthday, Morton Feldman, born 90 years ago, the 80-year-old Steve Reich, Ligeti György, who died 10 years ago, and Olivier Messiaen and David Lang. The monks of the monastery also have community with all the people who come to the festival in Pannonhalma: composers and their music, musicians and the audience.  And these people also undertake having community with the residents of the monastery. This year, besides the music – observing the festival’s traditions, yet changing them a bit – we focus on other community-forming events: we invite the visitors of the festival to have further meetings in the greater theme of exhibition, prayer and spirituality. Spirituality is perhaps the word that unites every theme and community this year.

As far as music is concerned: six concerts will be held at the archabbey’s representative cultural venues. The opening concert, Haydn’s oratorio The Creation will be performed in the basilica. For the first time in the festival’s history an oratorio of biblical-church topics will be performed in the architecturally empty eastern shrine that symbolizes completion.  The same venue accommodates a unique music event on the last day of the festival: Ligeti György’s piece written for a 16-part chorus will be performed in the context of the liturgy, after the monastic community’s traditional Gregorian daily prayer.  Besides the basilica, the Our Lady Chapel will also serve as a concert venue (Kurtág, Haydn and percussion-vocal music), similarly to the multi-functional cultural hall that was constructed within the framework of Saint Martin’s Year. This latter may lay claim to the title “Europe’s most eminent concert hall for chamber music”, and it is the hall’s debut in front of a connoisseur audience. The concert-series will come to completion with a night-performance, Presser Gábor’s and Szakcsi Lakatos Béla’s art will look for the community’s path between the works of old and contemporary masters.

Dejcsics Konrád OSB
cultural director