Dialogue – a key concept in music, relationships, life. Dialogue with God, the audience, the past and each other. At the XX Arcus Temporum, Mozart and Péter Eötvös, now two composers with a message from the beyond, are in dialogue. So much so, that the full title of the first programme of the official opening concert is Dialogue with Mozart – Da Capo for orchestra. For the piece, Eötvös has used fragments of Mozart that are recognisably Mozartian, but immediately lead to further reflection – like a thought thrown into a good conversation. And Eötvös is answered by Mozart, two immediately, since the concerto in E flat major for two pianos was composed by the composer for himself and his sister. The two soloists – this time a married couple – blend together like sentences in a conversation that lasts until dawn. The clarinet concerto also evokes inspirational friend os Mozart Anton Stadler, and then Eötvös takes the floor again – or rather the crickets, who are the protagonists of this work of chirps. The concert closes with congratulations of Mozart: he has already expressed his appreciation to the Haffner family in the following words

Can an instrument speak? Where are the boundaries of musical sounds and where does speech begin? How does a spoken text become music without using a singing voice? These are the questions that chamber music of Arcus Temporum seeks to answer, where not only Eötvös and Mozart interact. The concert opens with one of few pieces in a minor key of Mozart, which reveals a profound composer, a composer with a demanding musicological approach: this is how language of Bach sounds in Mozartian dialect. And Eötvös sets the words of Ulysses to music in a Lisztian tone, since the book mentions Ferenc Liszt twice. In the phrasing of the four-hand piano piece, we can almost hear the text of Joyce. The novel is followed by an opera, this time in chamber transcription. One cannot help but hear the singing to the familiar melodies. The Eötvös String Quintet, setting to music the correspondence between Mozart and his father, is followed by a quintet originally written for glass harmonica, and the concert concludes with a vivid example of how Mozart created a masterpiece even when he had to write for an instrument he could not stand.

The traditional, intimate and close to God event of Arcus Temporum is the prayer hour with music, which year after year makes the devotion in the Basilica even more uplifting with the playing of organist Zsolt Kiss. This year, not only on Sunday, but also on Saturday afternoon, the audience can enjoy a special duet of holiness and music. This time, the organ will be accompanied by the sound of a trumpet, not the menacing instrument of the Day of Wrath, but the piccolo trumpet, which will bring a more lyrical and emotional storytelling instead of the power of the ancient fanfares. The subjective double fills the space with broad melodies. The space for which the work takes its title. The echo, or echo, refers to the long, resounding sound of the organ, which keeps the words of the "revelator" long in our ears. Because of the venue, the piece will be performed in the Basilica for slightly longer than in a traditional concert hall, allowing enough time and space for each note to reach the hearts of those in the pews.

Anyone who has attended Arcus Temporum in the last 20 years, or visited the Pannonhalma Basilica in the last 800 years, knows that there is another dimension to the experience. A break from everyday life, recharging, purification, peace. That is why it is so difficult to say goodbye to this environment and return to everyday life. It is also not easy to close a three-day festival musically and say goodbye to the audience. Or to Péter Eötvös, who should have been here, but fate had it that the concerts could only pay tribute to his memory. So farewell to this year's artistic director of Arcus, András Keller, his ensembles, Concerto Budapest and the Ligeti Ensemble, and of course farewell to Mozart and Eötvös. The latter with his piece Respond, a reworking of his earlier viola concerto, which explores the human soul and tells of the endless sadness of saying goodbye to a loved one. Mozart's Gran Partita is the solution, which sends us on our way with beautiful moments and positive messages, because not all farewells are eternal, and alongside eternal farewells there are countless memories that are also eternal.

To meet something or someone is to discover a new world. Stepping out of your own inner environment is also an enriching experience, as previously unknown people, experiences, landscapes and cultures build your personality and nuance your view of the world. Together, the meeting parties are more than the sum of their parts, the encounters move the wheel of the world forward. The concert at the Library is full of musical encounters. Not only does the horn concerto feature a meeting between Mozart and the horn player Joseph Leutgeb, but the often risqué humour of Süssmayer and Mozart, who conclude the piece, also rears its head. Hommage of Péter Eötvös, also for trumpet, is the result of a great discovery and love affair: the composer chose the aria of Baroque master to be arranged after playing through more than half a thousand sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti. The double concerto of Mozart brings together two instruments that rarely get a solo role, with Shadows bringing acoustic and amplified sounds together. The concert concludes with a marriage of symphony and concerto, à la Mozart.

The Basilica and the Arcus Temporum Arts Festival are celebrating a milestone birthday, with a surprise for the occasion. Of course, a surprise can be more than just a pleasant surprise, but whether it is an unexpected surprise or a desired one, any event that falls outside our schedule is a chance to redefine, to express ourselves, to refresh. Mozart, for example, was hit by a series of unexpected turns when his first love left him and shortly afterwards he lost his mother. He poured his grief into music and wrote his only work in E minor, a painful reflection for violin and piano. In the second half of the dawn concert, a very different kind of surprise will take centre stage: an inspiring phenomenon that will keep the attention of the audience despite the early hour - improvisation. In a kind of classical music karaoke, Eötvös has created a foundation of a zither, a nytern and a synthesizer on which any and all instrumentalists can improvise. A moving interaction with the composer, who died in March.

As with the Saturday prayer service, a composition by Péter Eötvös makes the devotion in the 800-year-old Basilica, which is already spiritual, even more uplifting and more detached from the everyday. And not just any piece: the composer, who died in March, insisted that his piece The Sequences of the Wind be performed at the festival. The eight-movement music for flute and ensemble will therefore be part of the prayer service, which will be performed by the contemporary music ensemble Concerto Budapest, rather than the organ. It is also a special religious encounter, since one of the main sources of inspiration for the work is Zen Buddhism. The instruments, which, apart from the double bass and percussion, are played exclusively with air, do not illustrate nature, but nature itself. The calm, mountain wind, whirlwind, morning wind or sea breeze, which appear in the fantasy titles given afterwards, are more of an association. The movements express one of the well-known paradoxes of Zen: stillness in motion, movement in stillness, because in stillness there is always the possibility of movement.