In the last decade and a half the Budapest Autumn Festival built up a big reputation so I won’t even begin to explain where, how and why the BAF came into being. If you would like to learn about it, click on the BAF logo to find some information.

What I would like to say instead is how glad we are that the festival is being held for the fifteenth time and that despite all the financing and organisational difficulties perhaps we will have no need to be ashamed of this year’s programme that we are presenting for visitors to Budapest.

We have found in the past years that interest in the festival is slowly but steadily growing. Our public has grown younger too! Not just in age but also in spirit: it gives us real satisfaction to see game grannies J at our adventurous programmes, midnight concerts and bizarre venues, seeking and enjoying the pleasure of discovering something new.

Together with my associates, we are striving to bring a few internationally renowned artists this year too and to show important works of Hungarian contemporary art. It is not our aim to present a comprehensive review, but rather to compile a menu so that we can see what is happening in the world, where we stand in the world, and let the world see us too. We can take advantage of the attention that international companies attract to report, through our publications, on the work being done in Hungarian workshops. Our task is not just to provide light entertainment; we try to be pillars of the bridge that carries the cultural revolution, or rather cultural exchange between Budapest and the wide world.

This year we will host one of the most influential contemporary dance ensembles, Les Ballets C de la B of Belgium. The Hungarian public has not yet had the chance of a first-hand view of this ensemble that is much sought after by the world’s biggest festivals. Their performance titled Foi (Faith) combines dance, theatre, live music and singing and has provoked a response everywhere it has been shown.
Michael Talheimer’s name is now familiar. His staging of Ferenc Molnár’s Liliom upset part of the audience in Új Lipótváros at the 2003 Autumn Festival. This year we are inviting fans and detractors of the Deutsches Theater Berlin to a guest performance in Budapest of their prize-winning production of Faust.
The performance by RIMINI PROTOKOLL can be an effective way of widening our theatre horizon. The three-member group of organiser-director-designer-ideas man is the best known creative team in the world of documentarist theatre. Their latest performance deals, in the special language of the theatre, with organ transplants, and in particular with the questions arising before, during and after heart transplants.
It is well known that contemporary music is a hard sell. A few years ago the Klangforum Wien put together a series of projects to facilitate this with a little red wine. The Symposium evokes the symposia of the ancient world, where philosophising was accompanied by food and drink. The dilemmas of contemporary music are just as easily revolved in this way as the great questions of being were in the past.
James Dillon is one of England’s major – living! – composers. His video-opera, Philomela was first performed in Porto, now after performances in Strasbourg and Paris, it can be seen in Budapest.
For the past decade and a half the UMZE has been present from time to time in the programmes of the Autumn Festival. Without them it would perhaps not have been possible even to launch the Autumn Festival, so it is not surprising that they will be with us again on this 15th occasion. We are sure that the AMADINDA concert will add to the festive mood, just as the concert by the Accord Quartet which once again invites the adventurous to an unusual venue, and into the musical world of Hans Werner Henze.

I think it is time to stop, as our renewed homepage gives details of the programme. Enjoy exploring it, and if you get lost, let us know, we’ll come to your help. And, of course, you can hurl curses too, just don’t destroy our faith in the contemporary arts! Because what would the world be like if styles never changed, if taste stayed always the same … if you think about it, we would be inching along in the No. 7 bus resplendent in rococo wigs, and the ideal woman would be over 130 kg… hm. And on the subject of the ideal woman: let’s look for Miss BAF2006 together!