SONATA EVENING

August 23, Saturday, 2025, 7:00 PM-9:00 PM

Featuring Éva Csermák, violinist, and András Németh, pianist.

Éva Csermák, a Berlin-based violinist and educator, has for ten years been a regular performing artist enriching the classical music program at Csigó Malom. In this year’s concert, our audience who appreciate classical works can enjoy two emblematic sonatas from the musical repertoire performed by the artists. Johannes Brahms’s lyrical Sonata No. 1 in G major, Op. 78 follows classical traditions, while Sergei Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 2 in D major, Op. 94 — though respecting established traditions — offers a personal and radical reflection on the history of world music.

Éva Csermák writes about Prokofiev’s sonata:“Why does someone write sounds like these? How could one detach this from the historical period in which he lived and created? Or from his personal essence, even less so. I have said before that irony is least understood in music. The impossibility of expressing something with words can be grasped by reason, but music? It is not for that. We prefer to reach for loftier feelings like heroism, or a translucent impressionism, or folk songs that enchant with the innocence of a naive little girl. This pleases everyone. It brings success. And the one who points all this out, mocks it, yet writes outrageously good music from it — that is Prokofiev.

This is what the second sonata is about. Like a Buñuel film, where the pompous bourgeois takes off his shoes to walk barefoot through a flowered meadow, but on the third step, a thorn pricks his foot. Or maybe a rusty thumbtack. What is it doing in the meadow? No one knows.

Here’s your romance. Wow, what a modulation shaman Richard Strauss was. Here it is, I’ll incorporate it for you. How about a Beethoven scherzo for the second movement? Now that’s classical. Didn’t you recognize it? That’s how the great master usually does it. And if your tears still don’t flow from laughter, I’ll write Schubert’s barrel organ tears into the finale for you, maybe then you’ll feel like crying. Just so you have a reason. And I’ll finish the end so you can hear Nietzsche, as Zarathustra raises his hand and begins to speak to you.

And to seal it all with my life, I die on the same day as our great leader Comrade Stalin. It takes skill not just to live, but also to die. And to write music. And that is right there at his fingertips.”

Salon program: informal conversation accompanied by a wine tasting.

Ticket: 4.500 HUF

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