What is the theme behind this programme of music?

The central idea is “departures.” Not just in the literal sense, but also as a metaphor for origins, journeys, discoveries, endings and new beginnings. The programme moves between very different musical worlds: Hungary, China, New Zealand, and classical European traditions. Identity also plays an important role. Folk music is central to several works, and each piece has a strong sense of cultural identity.

For us as a duo, this theme is also personal. Balázs is Hungarian and lives in Germany, and I am a Chinese-born Kiwi living in Budapest. So this programme represents not only the different composers and countries, but also something of our own shared musical identity, shaped by our combined and diverse backgrounds.

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How did you decide on these particular pieces of music that span 350 years and three continents?

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The cello and piano repertoire is brimming with masterpieces, but we didn’t want simply a collection of great works. In curating this programme, we wanted not only the two instruments to have a dialogue with one another, but also the pieces themselves to speak to each other, across cultures and centuries, and between past and present.

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Each half of the recital begins with a Hungarian folk-inspired work, and from this common root each half “departs.” Kodály’s Hungarian Rondo, for example, is a tuneful and catchy overture to the concert. We immediately follow it with Anton Webern’s Sonata, a rarely performed work that clocks in at just two minutes but packs a powerful punch. It is aphoristic, highly charged, hyper- expressionistic. Webern was born just a year apart from Kodály and worked only a few hundred kilometres away in Vienna, within the same Austro-Hungarian world. Yet his music could hardly be more different. It’s fascinating to hear these two works side by side. The fact that Webern wrote his piece three years before Kodály’s may also come as a surprise to some.

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Time-travelling back almost two centuries, we segue directly from Webern into Bach without a pause. The leap from Webern’s taut, condensed intensity straight into Bach’s purity and contrapuntal clarity will feel like jumping into icy cold water, with each piece providing an interesting foil for the other. At the heart of the programme is Gao Ping’s Sonata No. 2 “Departure.” The title comes from a poem by the Song Dynasty poet Su Dongpo and explores the cyclical sense of the Chinese word shì (逝), “departure,” which could suggest both an ending and a beginning. This idea is mirrored in the music itself: the work concludes with the same notes with which it begins.

 

The ending vividly depicts the final lines of the poem: “From here with my little boat I depart / my remaining days at sea I shall start.” The music quietly floats away, departs, sending listeners into the interval in a pensive mood.

To parallel the first half, the second half kicks off with another Hungaricum: Bartók, Kodály’s friend and compatriot, offering his own earthy take on Hungarian folk music.

 

We then arrive at Nathanael Dejong’s atmospheric and thought-provoking Abandoned Voices, giving the programme its New Zealand voice. The programme ends with Brahms’s famous E minor Sonata, which looks back to the past, specifically paying homage to Bach and The Art of Fugue, bringing the recital full circle.

And now only for the hardcore music nerds. There’s another hidden thread. Most pieces in the first half circle around the tone D, while the second half gravitates toward E. D-epartur-E? A total fluke, but a satisfying little discovery!

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Kodaly, Bartók, and Gao Ping all lean heavily on folk music traditions of Hungary and China. Was that a deliberate choice? (If so, what draws you to folk music?)

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Absolutely! From the beginning, folk music was something we wanted to give real weight to in the programme. Hungary has an extraordinarily rich folk music tradition, with Kodály and Bartók both playing an enormous role in collecting and preserving it. Even today, folk music still has a very strong presence in Hungary. You can casually walk into a locale in central Budapest where táncház is happening, where often young Hungarians are playing, dancing, and singing traditional folk music, and knowing all the words! It is still very much a living, beating pulse. For me this is incredibly moving.

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Kodály, who was instrumental in developing music education in Hungary, believed that folk song should be the musical mother tongue of every Hungarian. He believed that all musical education should begin with the folk songs of one’s own nation. That’s why, even today in Hungarian music schools, much of the material taught consists of folk songs. Children grow up singing these songs, and are often the first pieces they play on an instrument. It is in their blood and bones.

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China also has a very long and deep folk tradition, but with Gao Ping the connection to tradition is broader. He doesn’t quote Chinese folk tunes directly, but rather evokes a certain Chinese sound world: the inflections of speech, the timbres of instruments like the guqin and erhu, and the spirit of the Chinese literati tradition. So in this programme, folk tradition is not one single thing. In Hungary, it might mean a village dance, peasant songs or national nostalgia. With Gao Ping, it is more linked with a certain cultural aesthetic.

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What draws me to folk music is that it feels very close to life, very human. It is about ordinary folk, about the people. As Kodály famously said, “music belongs to everyone.”

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Gao Ping’s piece, Departure, is based on a poem written by 11th century Chinese poet Su Dongpo who, at the time, was in exile after being fired from his government job for criticizing policies. In the poem, he talks about going out to get drunk and being locked out of his house in the wee hours of the morning. As he listens to the river, he wishes he could leave behind all the hustle and bustle of public life and just drift off in a little boat on the ocean. Was the choice of the piece quite deliberate, especially when paired with Nathanael Dejong’s piece Abandoned Voices which is about disconnection in the digital age?
[These are very complex ideas. How does music reflect these ideas?]

Honestly, no, at least not consciously! But what a wonderful connection, thank you for pointing that out. Gao Ping’s Departure was very deliberately chosen as the centrepiece of the programme, partly because of its personal connection for me, and mostly because it bridges Western and Eastern traditions in such a poetic way. Dejong’s Abandoned Voices was chosen because it speaks to something more contemporary and immediately relatable: the way modern life and constant distraction can make us less able to listen to one another.

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What should audiences expect when going into the concert?

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A very varied journey, with many changes of scenery. Come with an open mind and open ears! There is a bit of everything: raw Hungarian folk energy, humour, melancholy, Viennese Expressionism, Bachian architecture and purity, Chinese aesthetics and philosophy, New Zealand reflection, German Romanticism.

What do you hope audiences will feel during and after the performance?

I hope they feel that they have travelled somewhere. Perhaps even returning to the same point, but changed. Perhaps they might discover that things are much more connected than they first appear. Across different traditions and times, we human beings are often striving for the same kinds of self- expression, reflection, and connection. And sometimes we arrive at surprisingly similar results, even if by different means and paths.

These works may stem from different centuries, cultural backgrounds, and languages, but they ask questions that are still important to us: Where do we come from? What do we leave behind? How do we listen to and learn from one another in the meantime?

02.07.2026