The garden is an essential medium for music and the musician. Not only for open-air concerts and traditional serenades, but also for the stimulation of the creative process and for the composer's composer′s mental health and spiritual development. Composers are often inspired by nature, walking in the woods, while they also need solitude and silence. The garden provides a framework for nature, offering both freedom and coveted solitude, a home and an unknown. In the opening concert of the festival, the orchestral sounds of Mendelssohn, a young boy who composed thirteen string symphonies, will form the fence between climbing two trees. In between are chamber works by the more mature composer and two works by another resident composer, Jörg Widmann. Intimacy and playfulness meet in the four-hands of Izabella Simon and Dénes Várjon, while the Mendelssohn′s song bouquet features whispered confessions of love in the shade of lush foliage. Mendelssohn's Mendelssohn′s beautiful slow movement buds in Widmann's Widmann′s performance and orchestration, but the composer also pays homage to Schumann for a few album pages.

Paradoxically, one of the most important elements of music is silence. We can interpret sounds in relation to silence. Silence creates contrast, gives rhythm and arouses anticipation and curiosity. Silence is also necessary for the creator to make music. But in chamber music, silence also means that one player lets the other assert himself. Mendelssohn's Mendelssohn′s clarinet and cello sonatas at the beginning and end of the concerto are wonderful because the soloist and pianist create energy, proportion and harmony through anticipation rather than domination. But silence also precedes a performance - – at least on stage, since the musician's musician′s prior painstaking work, the endless series of rehearsals and etudes, are not heard as an audience. It is the exciting interplay of silence and sound when we sing when we are lulled to sleep, or when the pain of grief roars from within. But a bouquet of flowers on our table also silently brings in the rich sounds of nature. And Widmann's Widmann′s fragments can be interpreted as a revolution of silence.

Four works – four completely different musical worlds. Two composers from two eras, yet still behind all this contrast there is a welcome unity. Perhaps it is the genius, perhaps the love behind the sounds. The first half of the concert is all about entertainment. First, Jörg Widmann, just out of school, proves that the wild pulsation of techno can be beautiful, and that music based on monotonous foundations can suddenly turn into a complex six-part canon. This is followed by what is considered by many to be Mendelssohn's Mendelssohn′s finest chamber work, the sometimes playful, sometimes moving, but always highly melodic Matura mature Triotrio. After the intermission, there is much more of a tension between opposites, as youth is juxtaposed with youthfulness, orchestral sound replaces chamber music, and this time Mendelssohn becomes the early careerist and Widmann the mature composer. The latter commemorates his great predecessor, Franz Schubert, who died in 1828, while the former, with his unnumbered piano concertos, is establishing his own reputation among composers by building on classical traditions.

Everything is more mysterious at night. The garden too. Our ears become sensitive to the slightest sound, our eyes search for familiar shapes. One of the most extraordinary events of the festival is the night concert, which starts in the open air and continues under the cover of night in a chapel that seems even more mysterious, even more sacred. The programme begins with a string melody for solo cello by Jörg Widmann, born out of nowhere, and culminates in Mendelssohn's Mendelssohn′s youthful sextet for five string players and a piano. Everything in between revolves around the themes of night and nature. After a sedative the moon and the starry sky appear immediately in the Mendelssohn′s song selection, the next song sings of the silence of the night, then we hear the poet's poet′s reverie of love in the silent forest, his heart like the moon. And the dream comes in the form of Widmann's Widmann′s experimental piece, reminiscent of Bartók's Bartók′s nocturnes but stretching to jazz, in which the twelve chimes ringing of the piano remind us of the concert's concert′s unusual time.

The traditional, intimate and divine event of Arcus Temporum is a prayer hour accompanied by music, which is made even more uplifting by organist Zsolt Kiss's performance in the Basilica every year. This time, metal pipes will play a leading role in the festival, bringing to life the music of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, who brought Johann Sebastian Bach's music back to concert halls in the 19th century and made it popular. Given his great respect for the Baroque master, it is no wonder that Mendelssohn turned to the organ, his great predecessor's characteristic instrument. In 1844, he composed six organ sonatas, the first movement of the last of which can now be heard by the congregation arriving for prayer. "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name" – thus begins the prayer proclaimed in the Gospel of St. Matthew, which is well known even to those who do not practice religion. Mendelssohn took one of Bach's chorale arrangements of the Lord's Prayer as the basis for his movement. The work requires a true Mendelssohn performer, as the composer was an excellent organist, and the sonata makes full use of both the instrument and the performer's abilities.

It would be hard to find more apt words to describe the relationship between music and nature, to express the power of song, to describe the soaring joy of making music together, to describe the velvety farewell of a festival that will stay with us for days, than the words of Sándor Weöres, which encompass universes: “open green wings”. It is this spaciousness, this naturalness and this airiness that permeates the closing concert, where songs with and without lyrics will be performed, and where the composer in residence Jörg Widmann and the two artistic directors Izabella Simon and Dénes Várjon will also perform solo, before a few chamber pieces are followed by a real symphony to close Arcus Temporum 2025. Mendelssohn's Mendelssohn′s songs will be the focus of the concert. In the Songs without words, the piano really sings. And Jörg Widmann's Widmann′s hommage adds a special extra layer to Mendelssohn's Mendelssohn′s voices, just as the songs about holiness, fear, loneliness and sunshine form an exciting unity with the textless melodies. Finally, the Basilica lets the listeners go on their way with sounds of liberated joy.