Berlin-Budapest express: Sven Helbig w/ Ensemble (D) & Grischa Lichtenberger (D)

The first-ever Berlin-Budapest Express will kick off the summer with a two-day, predominantly electronic music festival, showcasing artists and forward-thinking music from Berlin and Budapest (and other places). On the opening day, Friday 2 June, the UK bass Hyperdub star Loraine James and one of the greats of industrial techno, Powell, will take to the stage; while on Saturday 3 June we will see the Budapest premiere of German contemporary composer Sven Helbig as well as one of Berlin's most exciting electronic musicians, Grischa Lichtenberger. Both days will close with free open-air concerts: on Friday, the traditional Németh András-Istvánfi Balázs bagpipe band will perform, and on Saturday, Norbert Oláh and his band will play traditional gypsy café music. The Berlin-Budapest Express is organised by the House of Music Hungary in cooperation with the Berlin-based cultural organisation Digital in Berlin. The idea behind the weekend, as simple as it sounds, is to connect two culturally vibrant European capitals – preferably with a train journey in the classical sense – and to create a forum for cross-genre exchanges and innovative musical activities.

Day tickets and combined season tickets are available.

Sven Helbig

The German composer Sven Helbig brings together elements of contemporary chamber music and electronic music in his works, which are not far from contemporary ambient, nuanced film music. "Classical musical language with a loose postmodern sensibility", as one reviewer for The Times newspaper said of the internationally acclaimed composer's works. Helbig composes for choir, orchestra and chamber orchestra, and has also written scores for bands as diverse as the Pet Shop Boys and Rammstein. In his work he combines classical compositional techniques with a thorough knowledge of electronic sound synthesis and proficiency on a variety of instruments. Initially trained on clarinet and guitar, he later switched to drums and now plays percussion and electronic instruments at his concerts. The self-taught composer's acclaimed debut album, Pocket Symphonies, was released by Deutsche Grammophon in 2013, and his most recent album Skills in 2022. In recent years, Sven's works have been performed in Europe's major concert halls, but none of his works have ever been premiered in Hungary, and this is also the first time he has been accompanied by a chamber orchestra of Hungarian musicians.

Grischa Lichtenberger

Born in 1983, Grischa Lichtenberger is a Berlin-based electronic music producer, visual and installation artist. He released his first, strongly glitch album in 2005 on a private label, but has become really active in the last decade or so, after releasing his first EP (Treibgut) in 2009 on raster-noton. Since then, he has released a series of complex, abstract, minimalist albums on the fractured borderland between idm and glitch. Having grown up on a remote farmhouse near Bielefeld (Westphalia), his artistic approach is strongly linked to landscape and to nature; however, in this sense he interprets landscape not only as a scenic or sublime recreational opportunity of nature, but as an imprint of personal history and the interactions of the material concreteness in the present environment. The personal touches he brings to his palette are sometimes aggressive in tone and display emotional depth, while at other times offer a paradoxical juxtaposition of introspective moods and restless reflections.