The Budapest Festival Orchestra's Surprise Concert

Iván Fischer conducts a programme nobody in the hall has been told in advance. Boxing Day has been the orchestra's birthday since 1983, and the Surprise Concert is the present it hands the audience instead of the other way round.

About the event

Fischer is not short of ideas, and the format lets him use the odd ones. Audiences have voted on what gets played and have been turned into a choir. There have been chamber performances and solo turns, music running from jazz and klezmer through folk traditions to Baroque, Classical, Romantic and contemporary repertoire, and more than once people have walked in to find the seating arranged in a way nobody expected. What is coming this time is still a secret, which is the whole point of buying a ticket for it. Allow about two and a half hours.

Dates and times

• Saturday 26 Decemberfrom 19:45

Getting there