100 Violins at Sava Centar on February 2, 2027 - an orchestra born from a serenade over a grave, today a Hungarian national treasure

The Budapest Gypsy Symphony Orchestra, known as 100 Violins, plays the Blue Hall of Sava Centar in Belgrade on February 2, 2027. Tickets are 3,000 dinars through tickets.rs, and the start is at 8 pm.

The orchestra was founded in 1985, and the story of how it came about is one of the finer ones in Hungarian music. After the death of the celebrated lead violinist Sándor Járóka in 1984, Roma musicians gathered over his grave to play him a serenade. Out of that serenade came an ensemble that took a name the following year and played its first concert at the Budapest Spring Festival in 1986.

The name lies about the numbers. When it was formed it had one hundred and thirty-eight members, and today one hundred and forty play. That makes it one of the largest orchestras of its type in the world, and in 2000 it entered the Guinness Book of Records. In 2014 the Hungarian Parliament declared it a hungarikum, a national cultural treasure, a status that country hands out very sparingly.

The repertoire is what makes it an exception. They play Liszt, Bartók, Kodály, Hubay, Erkel, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Sarasate and Strauss, but also traditional Hungarian Roma music, folk songs and dance tunes, in the same evening and with the same ensemble. The honorary president of the association was György Cziffra, the Hungarian Roma pianist regarded as one of the greatest virtuosos of the twentieth century.

Sava Centar remains the most fitting Belgrade stage for an orchestra of this make-up. Sales go through tickets.rs, at 3,000 dinars.