The evening organ concert in St Stephen’s Basilica is the one we’d book first: an hour of Bach, Mozart and Liszt under the dome, on most nights of the week. For the music at its best, get a seat in the Grand Hall of the Liszt Academy.
Budapest has two kinds of classical concert. The church concerts are programmes of favourites for visitors, about an hour long, on fixed nights, and you can book them ahead and cancel. The halls, the Liszt Academy, Müpa and the Opera, have the city’s real concert season, sold by each venue on its own website. This list has both, and a folk show at the end.
Which one for you
| Concert | Best for | When | Tickets |
|---|---|---|---|
| St Stephen’s Basilica, evening | Your first concert in Budapest | Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday at 8pm | Booked ahead online |
| Liszt Academy | A serious concert in the city’s best room | By date: see the programme | The Academy’s own website |
| Matthias Church | Strings in a painted church | Monday and Friday at 7pm | Booked ahead online |
| Hungarian State Opera | A night out in a gilded house | By date: see the programme | The Opera’s own website |
| St Stephen’s Basilica, organ gallery | Organ lovers, and a morning slot | Wednesday at 10am | Booked ahead online |
| St Michael’s Church | Vivaldi on the way back from Váci utca | Wednesday and Saturday at 7pm | Booked ahead online |
| Müpa | Big orchestras and visiting stars | By date: see the programme | Müpa’s own website |
| Folk show | Folk music and dancing with dinner | Friday and Saturday at 7pm | Booked ahead online |
Map of the concert venues in Budapest
Most of the venues are in central Pest within a walk of each other: the Basilica, St Michael’s on Váci utca, the Opera on Andrássy út and the Liszt Academy just off it. Matthias Church is up on Castle Hill in Buda, and Müpa is south of the centre by Rákóczi Bridge, so give yourself 20 minutes or more to get to either.
1. Hear an evening organ concert in St Stephen’s Basilica
In the evening, with the sightseers gone and the lights on, the Basilica is at its best. Concerts are held here nearly all year, at 8pm on most nights of the week, and an hour of music is the right length for a room this grand.
On Thursdays the organist Miklós Teleki plays with the bass Kolos Kováts and a flautist: Mozart, Albinoni and Liszt, ending on Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. The Tuesday and Sunday concerts are put on by a different organiser, with organ, strings, trumpet and soprano in programmes built round the Ave Marias, or Mozart’s Requiem, and GetYourGuide sells those nights.
The sound is big, with a long echo under the dome. Seats are sold in categories by row, but within a category it is first come, first served, so get there when the doors open, half an hour before the start. The pieces are not introduced from the stage, so read the programme on your booking before you go.
2. Sit in the Grand Hall of the Liszt Academy
This is where the music is best. The Liszt Academy is Hungary’s music university, named after Franz Liszt, and its Grand Hall, all Art Nouveau gilding and stained glass, has the concerts people who live here book: orchestras, pianists, string quartets and the Academy’s own students.
Almost every concert is a one-off, so pick by date rather than by name. The programme and tickets are on the Liszt Academy’s concert website, and our this week page lists the concerts on in the next few days.
If no date fits, the Academy runs guided tours of the building in English every day, through the foyers, the Grand Hall and the smaller Solti Hall, sold on its ticket shop.
3. Hear the strings in Matthias Church on Castle Hill
Inside Matthias Church every pillar and vault is painted, and a string concert here is the best-looking hour of music in the city. The Duna String Orchestra plays with the violinist Gyula Gabora at 7pm on Mondays and Fridays: Pachelbel’s Canon, Winter from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, a Bach violin concerto and Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik.
It is a small orchestra of strings, and the soloist is the star: on a September Friday his violin was what everyone talked about on the way out. The pews are high and it can be hard to see the players from further back, so the front seats are worth paying for.
Come up early. Fisherman’s Bastion is right in front of the church, and the view across the Danube to the Parliament is worth half an hour before the concert.
4. See an opera or a ballet at the Hungarian State Opera
A performance inside Miklós Ybl’s Opera House on Andrássy út is the night out to dress up for. The Hungarian State Opera and the Hungarian National Ballet perform on its main stage. The Opera has a second house too, the Eiffel Art Studios, so check which one your performance is in.
Buy tickets from the Opera itself: on its website, through its ticket shop at opera.jegy.hu and at the box office. There is no dress code, though plenty of people dress up. A few cheap standing places go on sale two hours before an evening performance, with a limited view of the stage, and latecomers wait until the interval.
If you can’t fit in a performance, the daytime tour ends with singers from the company performing on the grand staircase. In December the big draw is The Nutcracker: every date is in our Christmas concerts guide.
5. Meet the great organ of St Stephen’s Basilica on a Wednesday morning
This is the one for organ lovers. Every Wednesday at 10am, a small group meets at the Basilica’s main entrance and is taken up to the organ gallery, where the organist explains how the great organ works and then plays it for 20 minutes, close up. The programme runs from Bach’s Toccata and Fugue to Widor’s Toccata.
You are close enough to watch the hands and feet, which you never are at an evening concert, and the organist explains in English. The ticket also covers the church, the treasury and the panorama terrace, so it makes a whole morning: concert first, then the climb to the terrace.
6. Hear Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in St Michael’s Church on Váci utca
St Michael’s is a small baroque church on the southern half of Váci utca, and the handiest concert if you’ve spent the afternoon shopping or at the Great Market Hall. Musicians from the Danube String Orchestra play the whole of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons here at 7pm on Wednesdays and Saturdays, with Pachelbel’s Canon, Albinoni’s Adagio and Schubert’s Ave Maria before it.
Because the church is small, you sit closer to the players than in the Basilica, and the sound is warm and clear. The catch is the wooden pews, which are narrow and hard, so bring a cushion or a folded jumper to sit on. In summer the church gets warm inside.
On Fridays at 8pm the organist Miklós Teleki gives a solo organ concert of Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart and Franck. The organ is at the back of the church, so a screen at the front shows him playing.
7. Catch a big orchestra at Müpa
Müpa is the modern arts centre on the Pest riverside by Rákóczi Bridge, and its Béla Bartók National Concert Hall is where the big orchestras and the visiting stars play. The same building has a second stage, the Festival Theatre, and puts on jazz, world music, dance and family shows through the year.
Tickets are on Müpa’s own website and at its box offices; at busy times the website puts you in a queue. Take tram 2 along the Pest riverbank to get there; the HÉV H7 and trams 1 and 24 stop a few minutes’ walk away. If you drive, a ticket for a performance gets you free parking that day.
Hungarian folk show in Budapest
For folk music and dancing rather than classical, the show to book is the Rajkó Folk Ensemble, founded in 1950, in the Hungarian Gastro Cellar on Király utca. A string band and dancers in costume give two half-hour sets at 7pm on Fridays and Saturdays, and on Sundays in December, with a break in between.
You choose the ticket by how much you want to eat: the show with a welcome drink, the show with a bowl of goulash soup and bread, or the show with a three-course dinner of soup, chicken paprikash and somlói, with a vegetarian menu if you ask when you book. We’d pick the goulash: enough to eat without turning the show into a long dinner.
It’s a small troupe in a long, stone-arched cellar, not a stage show, and the band and the dancing are the point. The tables at the far end have the worst view of the floor, so arrive when the doors open at 6.30pm. The cellar is down steps and not wheelchair accessible.
If dinner matters more than the dancing, the dinner and folk show at Puli & Juhász, on Dob utca in the Jewish Quarter, is a two-hour, three-course meal with folk music all evening and two 15-minute dance sets in its cellar. It has a vegan menu as well as goulash and chicken paprikash, and tables are shared on busy nights.
For the national company, the Hungarian State Folk Ensemble, check the programme on the Hungarian Heritage House website: its performances move between venues such as the Erkel Theatre, and its Christmas family show is at Müpa.
Classical concerts in Budapest this week
The concerts in the halls change every night. Our things to do this week page lists the concerts on in the next seven days at the Liszt Academy, Müpa and the Opera, alongside everything else on, and each month has its own page from our what’s on guide.
Before you book a concert in Budapest
- Buy from the venue for the halls. The Opera, Müpa and the Liszt Academy stand behind only the tickets sold on their own websites, at their box offices and through their own ticket shops.
- The church concerts are sold by several sites. The same concert can turn up under different names and prices, so check the church, the day and the time before you pay.
- Bring a layer and something to sit on. Churches can be cool in winter and warm in summer, and the pews are hard.
- Check your booking around public holidays. On a national holiday, look at your booking email the day before in case of a change.
