Morning Raga

There has never been anything like this before – a truly special concert opening at the House of Music! Music at Sunrise – Indian ragas at dawn is indeed a concert that starts at daybreak, to which we welcome fans of Indian music and all open-minded music lovers who would like to take part in an unusual yet surely very memorable experience. Ustad Irfan Khan on sarod, Mátyás Wolter on sitar and Balázs Virágh on pakhawaj will perform Indian dawn ragas.

The early hours of the morning hold a special place in the tradition of Indian classical music. In Indian music, every raga has its own time of day, a period when its mood, character, and emotional world can be experienced most fully. Musicians take this tradition very seriously; they even practice a given raga at the time of day that is considered its “playing time”. Many masters get up as early as three in the morning for disciplined, daily practice, when the world is still quiet, the mind is clear, and we awaken freshly together with the sound. The period just before sunrise is called Brahma Muhurta in India, a particularly calm and inspiring time that is conducive to deep musical (and other) concentration. In the modern world, most concerts take place in the evening, so we rarely have the opportunity to hear those ragas whose playing time falls at dawn. In India, however, there are still morning concerts where these special melodies can be heard. This is precisely why listening to dawn ragas is such a rare and special experience: the music at this time is not only performed, but it is performed in the way it has been meant to sound for centuries.


Ustad Irfan Khan
Irfan Muhammad Khan is a master of the sarod, one of North India’s most celebrated stringed instruments. Born into a family of musicians, he is part of a long, renowned lineage of sarod players who have passed down their art – within a fully oral tradition – from father to son in an unbroken chain going back to the early 19th century. With his vast, authentic repertoire of historical raga compositions, Ustad Irfan Khan is regarded as one of the last instrumental artists of the Indian subcontinent who – in addition to refined technical mastery – also possesses outstanding musical and historical knowledge.
Based in Kolkata, Khan has performed widely across India, as well as in Germany and the United States. In the 1980s he spent three years in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he performed and taught as a cultural ambassador for the Indian Council for Cultural Relations.
From 1995 to 2009 he was head of the music department at an elite private school in the state of Assam, India. Between 2009 and 2013 he taught sitar and sarod at the newly founded Afghanistan National Institute of Music in Kabul. Since then he has lived in Kolkata and – in addition to teaching at the renowned Calcutta School of Music – he also instructs a number of students privately in his own home.


Mátyás Wolter
Mátyás Wolter is a highly trained instrumental artist dedicated to South Asian classical music, that is, Hindustani raga music. His instruments, the sitar and the surbahar (bass sitar), are among the most difficult stringed instruments in the world. With more than twenty years of experience, Mátyás is one of the few European artists who stand out both as virtuosic performers of this rare genre and as in‑depth researchers of the music and its historical performance practice.
Mátyás undertook his initial studies under the guidance of Pt. Subroto Roy Chowdhury, spending many years at his first master’s home in Kolkata. After his master’s death in 2017, he turned to Ustad Irfan Khan for further guidance – who is the leading figure of the ancient Lucknow–Shahjahanpur gharana tradition of instrumental music – and he is currently mastering one of the largest repertoires of historical instrumental compositions inherited from Khan’s family.
As a composer and performer in the renowned jazz formation Pulsar Trio, Mátyás’s music has received wide recognition even beyond Indian music circles. Focusing on traditional raga interpretation, Wolter has performed internationally, released raga and jazz albums, composed film scores, and co‑founded the Berlin Raga Tribe initiative, which supports authentic raga performances.
His latest project, the Lucknow–Shahjahanpur Gharana Archive, aims to preserve and share historical recordings of raga masters.


Balázs Virágh
Balázs Virágh is a Hungarian‑born, internationally acclaimed artist specializing in Indian classical music, with a particular focus on the pakhawaj, a North Indian percussion instrument. His master, Pt. Mohan Shyam Sharma, is one of India’s finest and most highly respected pakhawaj artists.

Balázs has been studying Indian classical music for more than a decade. He performs regularly on Hungarian and international stages, has played together with numerous renowned Indian masters, and has presented the unique art of the pakhawaj in solo performances in India, Europe, and Hungary.
In 2023 he founded Hungary’s first Indian music school, the Ganapati Music School, and released Hungary’s first Indian classical rhythm solo album, titled Mridang Vadan. He is currently involved in developing a new conservatory project at the Rajasthan Birla Institute of Technology and Science, where he serves as a pakhawaj and Indian music expert.
Within the framework of a scholarship from the Indian government, Balázs studied for one year at the Sangeet Natak Akademi Kathak Kendra, where he received an excellent qualification under the guidance of pakhawaj master Shri Shashikant Pathak. Balázs Virágh is an experienced performer of Indian classical music, both as a soloist and as an accompanist for dance, vocal, and instrumental productions.