Artist database

This is the Artist Database of BMC, which includes information about composers, musicians, orchestras, choirs and groups that are either Hungarian or Hungarian by origin or live in Hungary, as well as information about releases recorded with them.

Farkas Róbert


conductor

Place of Birth
Ózd
Date of Birth
1982
Web

 
Róbert Farkas was born in 1982 in Ózd, Hungary. At fourteen, he continued his musical studies at the Béla Bartók Conservatory in Miskolc and specialized in Solfeggio, Music Theory and Piano. After switching to the Conservatory in Budapest bearing the same name, he successfully graduated in 2000, receiving his diploma. In 2006, after graduating from the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music as a vocal and music teacher and choral conductor as a pupil of Tamás Gál and András Ligeti, and starting his orchestral conducting studies, Róbert Farkas won an Erasmus scholarship and continued his studies in conducting at The University of the Arts in Berlin. He graduated in 2012 as a student of Lutz Köhler. During this time-period he attended master classes held by Péter Eötvös, Bernard Haitink, Gianluigi Gelmetti and Jorma Panula. In 2011 he won 3. Prize at the International Lovro von Matačić Conducting Competition and the Special Award of the Croatian Composers’ Society and the Award of the Croatian Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra.

He made his debut at the opera stage with the Theater un Orchester Heidelberg as a music assistant and correpetiteur, performing Dionysos by Wolfgang Rihm, followed by a three year period of conducting several productions of the Heidelberg opera house. In 2016 Róbert Farkas cooperated with David Robertson and, as an instructor conductor, he helped Pablo Heras Casado and Robin Ticciati to prepare to the Echo Classic gala concert. He started cooperating with Iván Fischer in 2013 in Berlin; since then, they have been partnering in several productions at the Konzerthausorchester. Since 2015, Farkas has been working for the Budapest Festival Orchestra, organizing concerts and tours for the ensemble. At his first performance in Budapest, commemorating Zoltán Kocsis, he conducted the Piano Concerto by Busoni (with Kun Woo Paik) and the Symphony No. 2 by Brahms. In 2017 he conducted as a guest conductor at the Klassz a pARTon festival. In addition to the above mentioned ensembles, Róbert Farkas has worked with other world renowed orchestras including the Berliner Symphoniker, the Luzern Festivalstrings, the Leipziger Mendelssohn Kammerorchester, the Neophone Ensemble, the Philharmonisches Kammerorchester Wernigerode, the Collegium Musicum Pommersfelden, the Pannon Philharmonic Orchestra and the Szombathely Symphony Orchestra. He often conducts the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Danubia Orchestra, MAV Symphony Orchestra, Concerto Budapest and the Budapest Festival Orchestra. He has been worked the Symphony Orchestra of Croatian Radiotelevision and the Australian Youth Orchestra too.

He conducted several classical operas (e.g.: Cosi fan tutte, La Traviata, Die Entführung aus dem Serail) and a lot of modern, contemporary works (Shostakovich: Moskau Tscherjomuschki, Hindemith: Lehrstück, Rihm: Nietzsche Opera Dionysos, the German premiere of Peter Maxwell Davies' The Turn of the Tide, Philip Glass: Echnaton. Moreover, he worked as an assistant and co-conductor to Johannes Harneit in the world premieres of Evenings at the River and High Tide, with Peter Konwitschny as director.

In 2018 he was first awarded the Betty Wágner Prize by the City of Heves.