The history of the orchestra

Of all the universities of the world which do not have a faculty of music, the Technical University of Budapest was, to the best of our knowledge, the first one to form a symphony orchestra in 1896. Since then, the orchestra has consistently been in session, with the exception of the year of 1945.

The members of the orchestra consist mainly of students of our University, but there are some from other universities, too. Many stay after having finished their studies, which means that one could find engineers as well as professors taking part in the orchestra’s work.

Rehearsals are held twice a week (Mondays and Fridays 6:30-9:30) and concerts are given three to four times during the school year in the Main Hall of the Technical University.

Occasionally, the ensemble cooperates with the Academy of Music in their graduation concerts as an accompanying orchestra for vocal as well as instrumental finalists. The concerts held in the Main Hall are also often repeated in other educational or cultural surroundings.

Conduc-tors and soloists are usually artists at the outset of their career. Some of our famous conductors and soloists had their first appearances with the Orchestra of the Technical University.

Since its foundation, the orchestra has often visited other universities abroad. Recently, guest performances have been made in Sarajevo (1971), in Wroclav (1986), in Vienna (1989), in Enschede (1990), in Compiègne (1995, 1997), in Belfort (1996, 1997, 2000, 2003), in Bologna (2004), in Marosvásárhely (1998) and in Barót (2003) /Transylvania/.

In exchange, orchestras of other universities have visited us, too: the University of Karlsruhe (1986), the American Duke University (1987), the Technical University of Vienna (1988) and Enschede (1989), the Harvard University (1992), the Christian-Albrecht University in Kiel (1993), the Universities of Düsseldorf and Compiègne (1995), the CREA University of Amsterdam (2001) and the Bragi University (2003), Holland