Universal Liszt Vitaly Pisarenko (piano), Kateryna Titova (piano), Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, Martin Haselböck (conductor)

Programme

• Ján Levoslav Bella: Concert Piece in the Hungarian Style
• Hector Berlioz: Hungarian March from The Damnation of Faust
• Franz Liszt: Fantasy on Hungarian Folk Melodies for Piano and Orchestra
• Franz Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 2 in A major
• Franz Liszt: Les Préludes, Symphonic Poem

Performers

Kateryna Titova

Born in Ukraine and now based in Berlin, Kateryna Titova is acclaimed for her passionate artistry, remarkable virtuosity, and her rare ability to tell stories through the piano. Combining technical brilliance with poetic imagination, she creates performances of exceptional emotional depth.

She has appeared throughout Europe, Asia, and beyond, performing in prestigious concert halls including the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Musikverein and Konzerthaus in Vienna, as well as at leading international festivals. Since 2024, she has been Artist in Residence at the Liszt Festival Raiding in Austria, held in the birthplace of Franz Liszt. Her residency has been marked by an intensive exploration of Liszt’s oeuvre, which has become a defining aspect of her artistic identity.

Her extensive discography includes both solo and concerto recordings. Her latest album, Le Concert c’est moi, dedicated to the music of Franz Liszt, has received widespread international acclaim.

Vitaly Pisarenko

Vitaly Pisarenko, a Ukrainian-born pianist, is the winner of the 8th International Franz Liszt Piano Competition in Utrecht and a finalist of the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition. He currently lives in the United Kingdom, where he teaches at the renowned Royal College of Music in London.

Throughout his career, he has performed in more than 30 countries worldwide and appeared in some of the world’s leading concert halls, including the Musikverein in Vienna, Wigmore Hall in London, and the Palace of Arts (Müpa) in Budapest.

The New York Times wrote of his playing:

“Vitaly Pisarenko is a pianist with prodigious technique, myriad shadings, and scrupulous accuracy.”

Martin Haselböck

Austrian conductor and organist Martin Haselböck is internationally recognised as one of the leading exponents of historically informed performance. Following studies in Vienna and Paris, he first established an international reputation as an organist, winning major international competitions and performing with conductors including Claudio Abbado, Lorin Maazel, Wolfgang Sawallisch and Riccardo Muti.

In 1985 he founded the Vienna Academy Orchestra, which has since become one of Europe’s leading period-instrument ensembles. Under his artistic direction, the orchestra has gained international acclaim for its interpretations of repertoire from the Baroque to the early twentieth century, innovative concert formats, award-winning recordings and collaborations with artists including John Malkovich.

As a guest conductor, Haselböck has appeared with many of the world’s leading orchestras, including the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Dresden Philharmonic, Staatskapelle Weimar, Orchestre National de Lyon, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, as well as numerous orchestras throughout Europe, North America, Asia and Australia. For more than twenty years he also served as Music Director of the Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra in Los Angeles.

Martin Haselböck is internationally regarded as one of today’s foremost Liszt scholars. For decades he has devoted himself to the composer’s music as performer, editor and researcher. He edited Franz Liszt’s complete organ works and was the first artist to record them in their entirety. With the Vienna Academy Orchestra he subsequently realised the first historically informed complete performance and recording of Liszt’s orchestral works on period instruments in the award-winning series The Sound of Weimar.

Another landmark achievement is the internationally acclaimed RESOUND project, which returns major works of the orchestral repertoire to the venues for which they were originally conceived. Its most prominent chapter, RESOUND Beethoven, culminated in the internationally televised gala marking the bicentenary of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, presented by Beethoven-Haus Bonn and WDR in 2024.

Martin Haselböck’s extensive discography has received numerous international awards, including the Diapason d’Or, the German Record Critics’ Award and the Grand Prix du Disque Franz Liszt. He served for nearly four decades as Professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and is an Honorary Member of the Vienna Hofmusikkapelle as well as recipient of the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art.

Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra

The Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra (SRSO) was founded in 1929 at the Bratislava branch of the Radiojournal broadcasting company as the first professional symphony orchestra in Slovakia. Its first Chief Conductor was František Dyk. Composer Alexander Moyzes, then Head of Music Broadcasting at Slovak Radio, played a pivotal role in shaping the orchestra’s artistic development and expanding its repertoire.

During its more than ninety-year history, the orchestra has been led by distinguished conductors including Ľudovít Rajter, Ladislav Slovák, Ondrej Lenárd, Charles Olivieri-Munroe, Oliver Dohnányi, and Peter Valentovič. Since 2020, Konstantin Ilievsky has served as the orchestra’s Permanent Conductor.

Today, the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra ranks among Slovakia’s leading orchestras and is internationally recognised for its exceptionally extensive discography. It has recorded thousands of works for Slovak Radio as well as for prestigious labels including Opus, Supraphon, Naxos, Marco Polo, and Arte Nova. The orchestra also regularly records film music for Slovak and international productions.

Throughout its history, the orchestra has collaborated with many of the world’s leading conductors and soloists, including Sir Charles Mackerras, Neeme Järvi, Vladimir Spivakov, Anna Netrebko, José Carreras, Edita Gruberová, Boris Berezovsky, Peter Dvorský, Pavol Bršlík, Emmanuel Pahud, and Daniel Ottensamer. It has also appeared alongside internationally renowned popular artists such as Ray Charles, Liza Minnelli, and Shirley Bassey.

The orchestra performs regularly at Slovakia’s most important music festivals and has toured extensively throughout Europe, as well as Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom. It has appeared repeatedly at Vienna’s Musikverein and in leading concert halls across Germany and Austria. During the 2016 and 2017 seasons, it served as the resident orchestra of the opera festival in St. Margarethen, Austria.

Among its major recording achievements are the world premiere recording of Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari’s opera The Jewels of the Madonna, complete symphony cycles by Dmitri Shostakovich and Alexander Moyzes for Naxos, and more than one hundred albums devoted to contemporary American music. Its recordings have also been featured in Academy Award-winning film productions.

The Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra specializes in the interpretation of Classical, Romantic, and 20th- and 21st-century repertoire. It actively supports Slovak composers and performers and regularly includes works by Slovak composers in every concert season, many of them presented as world premieres.