The garden is an essential medium for music and the musician. Not only for open-air concerts and traditional serenades, but also for the stimulation of the creative process and for the composer's composer′s mental health and spiritual development. Composers are often inspired by nature, walking in the woods, while they also need solitude and silence. The garden provides a framework for nature, offering both freedom and coveted solitude, a home and an unknown. In the opening concert of the festival, the orchestral sounds of Mendelssohn, a young boy who composed thirteen string symphonies, will form the fence between climbing two trees. In between are chamber works by the more mature composer and two works by another resident composer, Jörg Widmann. Intimacy and playfulness meet in the four-hands of Izabella Simon and Dénes Várjon, while the Mendelssohn′s song bouquet features whispered confessions of love in the shade of lush foliage. Mendelssohn's Mendelssohn′s beautiful slow movement buds in Widmann's Widmann′s performance and orchestration, but the composer also pays homage to Schumann for a few album pages.

Paradoxically, one of the most important elements of music is silence. We can interpret sounds in relation to silence. Silence creates contrast, gives rhythm and arouses anticipation and curiosity. Silence is also necessary for the creator to make music. But in chamber music, silence also means that one player lets the other assert himself. Mendelssohn's Mendelssohn′s clarinet and cello sonatas at the beginning and end of the concerto are wonderful because the soloist and pianist create energy, proportion and harmony through anticipation rather than domination. But silence also precedes a performance - – at least on stage, since the musician's musician′s prior painstaking work, the endless series of rehearsals and etudes, are not heard as an audience. It is the exciting interplay of silence and sound when we sing when we are lulled to sleep, or when the pain of grief roars from within. But a bouquet of flowers on our table also silently brings in the rich sounds of nature. And Widmann's Widmann′s fragments can be interpreted as a revolution of silence.

Four works – four completely different musical worlds. Two composers from two eras, yet still behind all this contrast there is a welcome unity. Perhaps it is the genius, perhaps the love behind the sounds. The first half of the concert is all about entertainment. First, Jörg Widmann, just out of school, proves that the wild pulsation of techno can be beautiful, and that music based on monotonous foundations can suddenly turn into a complex six-part canon. This is followed by what is considered by many to be Mendelssohn's Mendelssohn′s finest chamber work, the sometimes playful, sometimes moving, but always highly melodic Matura mature Triotrio. After the intermission, there is much more of a tension between opposites, as youth is juxtaposed with youthfulness, orchestral sound replaces chamber music, and this time Mendelssohn becomes the early careerist and Widmann the mature composer. The latter pays homage to the famous pianist Lars Vogt, who died in 2022 at the age of 52, while the former, with his untold piano concertos, is building on the classical tradition and establishing his own standing among composers.

Everything is more mysterious at night. The garden too. Our ears become sensitive to the slightest sound, our eyes search for familiar shapes. One of the most extraordinary events of the festival is the night concert, which starts in the open air and continues under the cover of night in a chapel that seems even more mysterious, even more sacred. The programme begins with a string melody for solo cello by Jörg Widmann, born out of nowhere, and culminates in Mendelssohn's Mendelssohn′s youthful sextet for five string players and a piano. Everything in between revolves around the themes of night and nature. The moon and the starry sky appear immediately in the Mendelssohn′s song selection, the next song sings of the silence of the night, then we hear the poet's poet′s reverie of love in the silent forest, his heart like the moon, and finally Suleika casts a dream over the eyes of the narrator. And the dream comes in the form of Widmann's Widmann′s experimental piece, reminiscent of Bartók's Bartók′s nocturnes but stretching to jazz, in which the twelve chimes ringing of the piano remind us of the concert's concert′s unusual time.

The traditional, intimate and close to God event of Arcus Temporum is the prayer hour with music, which year after year makes the devotion in the Basilica even more uplifting with the playing of organist Zsolt Kiss. This time, the metal whistles will blow the notes of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, one of the festival′s protagonists, who brought the music of Johann Sebastian Bach back to concert halls in the 19^th century and made it popular. With such reverence for the Baroque master, it is no wonder that Mendelssohn turned to the organ, the instrument that was the hallmark of his great predecessor. In 1844, he composed five organ sonatas, the first of which is now being performed for the congregation at the prayer service. “What God wills for me is best for me. He is ready to bless me, to help me, if I trust in his great name”, is the text of the chorale on which Mendelssohn based the opening movement of the first sonata. The work calls for a true Mendelssohnian performer, as the composer was an accomplished organist, and the sonata makes the most of both his instrument and instrumental gifts.

It would be hard to find more apt words to describe the relationship between music and nature, to express the power of song, to describe the soaring joy of making music together, to describe the velvety farewell of a festival that will stay with us for days, than the words of Sándor Weöres, which encompass universes: “open green wings”. It is this spaciousness, this naturalness and this airiness that permeates the closing concert, where songs with and without lyrics will be performed, and where the composer in residence Jörg Widmann and the two artistic directors Izabella Simon and Dénes Várjon will also perform solo, before a few chamber pieces are followed by a real symphony to close Arcus Temporum 2025. Mendelssohn's Mendelssohn′s songs will be the focus of the concert. In the Songs without words, the piano really sings. And Jörg Widmann's Widmann′s hommage adds a special extra layer to Mendelssohn's Mendelssohn′s voices, just as the songs about holiness, fear, loneliness and sunshine form an exciting unity with the textless melodies. Finally, the Basilica lets the listeners go on their way with sounds of liberated joy.