Gábor Presser to Give Eight Concerts in 10 Days

Gábor Presser is preparing an unusually broad musical project alongside a demanding concert schedule: eight performances in 10 days and a three-part release titled Munkakönyv.

The project’s first section, Versdalok, appeared digitally at the end of 2024. It contains musical versions of 35 contemporary Hungarian poems. The writers include living poets such as Virág Erdős, Dániel Varró and Lajos Parti Nagy, as well as poets who died in recent years, including Ákos Fodor, Péter Kántor, Dezső Tandori and Péter Esterházy.

The recording also brings together a wide range of guest performers. Parti Nagy’s B-flat minor sonnet, for example, features opera singers Kati Károlyi and Márta Murányi alongside rocker Dani Szebényi.

The second section, Zenék képzelt filmekhez, marks Presser’s return to instrumental music more than 40 years after his album Electromantic. The hour-long work explores imagined film scenes through acoustic and electronic sounds. The third chapter, Hol rokk, hol nem rokk, consists of new songs written in recent years. One uses a demo recording Presser made on cassette in the 1980s, while another will be recorded again on a phone. The project includes many guest singers and musicians.

Presser told MTI that Munkakönyv represented years of work and that he was pleased such a large release could appear “toward the end of my career.” He began his career with Omega in the late 1960s, founded Locomotiv GT in 1971, and has worked as a solo performer since the early 1980s. His website says he has written about 600 songs and numerous major works for musical theater.

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It was a great deal of work over many years, but I am pleased that, toward the end of my career, such a large publication can appear.