A musical letter to the teachers, traditions and sounds that formed me.
Concept
Dear Éva is about returning as an adult to the music, people and sounds that shaped me as a child—and hearing them again from a completely different perspective.
The title carries several meanings. Éva was my first violin teacher, my grandmother was also called Éva, and Éva is my own middle name. The album becomes a letter to my teacher, my family, my younger self and, more broadly, to my Hungarian roots.
The programme is built around one monumental work, the Brahms Violin Concerto, surrounded by shorter pieces connected to my childhood and the Hungarian violin tradition.
The centrepiece
Johannes Brahms
A new chamber realisation would reduce the orchestral forces without reducing the scale of the music, then extend that sound world with cimbalom and, possibly, accordion. The solo part, structure and musical architecture remain intact: these are orchestral colours, not a crossover rewriting.
Brahms wrote the concerto for Joseph Joachim, born in the Kingdom of Hungary. They worked closely on the violin writing; Joachim premiered the work and wrote the cadenza most associated with it. Brahms’s connection to Hungarian musical culture reaches further back through violinist Ede Reményi.
The smaller ensemble creates a more immediate, chamber-musical relationship while preserving the concerto’s weight and symphonic quality. As far as we have been able to establish, the complete work has never been recorded in this unique form: reduced chamber orchestra with cimbalom and the possible addition of accordion.
“Reduce the orchestral forces without reducing the scale of the music.”
The ensemble
Proposed recording partner
2× OPUS KLASSIKFairy Tales · Bella Furia
CHAARTS would be the ideal ensemble for the project. Their work is founded on performing major symphonic repertoire in smaller formations while retaining orchestral scale, colour and intensity—‘making the big small and the small big.’
Bringing together exceptional chamber musicians from across Europe, they combine chamber-music flexibility with orchestral power. Their recent recordings have earned two OPUS KLASSIK awards: Fairy Tales with Regula Mühlemann, and Bella Furia with Shira Patchornik in 2026.
The Brahms project takes that approach one step further, introducing cimbalom and exploring the Hungarian musical world surrounding the concerto.
The shorter works
The album opens with these shorter works, before culminating in the Brahms Violin Concerto.
All of these works were originally written for violin and piano and will be newly arranged for solo violin and string ensemble.
A rarely performed piece I learned very young, and one I still find extraordinarily beautiful and touching. Returning to it as an adult is at the heart of this project.
In the solo violin and string ensemble arrangement I already perform. Folk material, classical composition and chamber strings meet naturally in the album’s sound world.
Two contrasting pieces in a new arrangement for solo violin and string ensemble, c. 11 minutes in total. The second, Danse hongroise, brings another compelling Hungarian thread into the programme.
One or two further miniatures may complete the programme and its dramatic arc.
The larger idea
As children, we absorb an enormous amount before we understand its significance. We inherit ways of phrasing, singing and playing from our teachers, families and the musical world around us. Years later, with greater freedom and life experience, we can return and discover something completely different.
My own childhood also included the sound of Hungarian traditional music: when he was younger, my father played viola (brácsa) in a band, and the cimbalom was part of the musical environment I grew up around. Its place on the album is not decorative; it connects directly to my musical memory.
Brahms is the monumental work a violinist grows towards. The miniatures represent some of the music from which that journey began. The same Hungarian chamber sound connects the two.
Why Hungaroton
The project has a natural relationship with Hungaroton: a label whose history encompasses generations of Hungarian classical performers alongside folk and Roma traditions, as well as rare and first recordings.
Dear Éva engages with that history from the perspective of a Hungarian violinist of a younger generation. The aim is not to recreate the past, but to take something inherited and ask:
What does this musical heritage mean—and what can it sound like—to me now?
Proposed repertoire
Estimated duration depends on final selection
Solo violin + chamber strings
Solo violin + string quintet
Solo violin + string ensemble · No. 2: Danse hongroise
Solo violin + reduced chamber orchestra