Dániel Gryllus, Vilmos Gryllus and Márta Sebestyén
30 December 2010, 7.30 p.m. - 9.30 p.m.
Palace of Arts Festival Theatre, Budapest
Kaláka founder members Dániel Gryllus and Vilmos Gryllus made a CD a few years ago with Mártá Sebestyén called Fifteen Psalms that later became a film. The trio have given many successful concerts based on the disc. The Book of Psalms in the Old Testament is a collection of 150 prayers and hymns. They are central to both Jewish and Christian faiths, and depict problems of life such as suffering, death, persecution, joy, death, sin and love. The brothers set some of these psalms to music, having earlier made similar discs about Paul the Apostle and the Sermon on the Mount. Zoltán Sumonyi selected the psalms and put them into contemporary verse. In the music, we hear elements of both Jewish and Christian musical culture, presented in true “Gryllus” style.
Over the years, the Gryllus brothers have given countless concerts, been on foreign tours, written songs for children, set volumes of verse to music and written for films: last year, Kaláka celebrated its forty- fifth anniversary. As for the performance style of the psalms, they have endeavoured to create musical arrangements that both retain the dignity of the text and are pleasant and exciting to modern ears. People will want to sing along. The trio have performed the psalms in not just concert halls but also in churches, both in Hungary and abroad.