|
Introduction |
|
Sign up for our newsletter!
|
2007
 |
|
We are Guinness recorders!
Gratulations for everybody, who was take part on this 8-days-concert!
I think I can say that the 192-hour-long mega-concert was a resounding success both among the audience and the participants, as well as the organizing staff! We had 410,000 viewers for the video broadcast via the Internet and as many as thirty-eight thousand people connected to our programme during the last 30 minutes! If you take the number of an average sports hall audience, then we cannot complain! After exceeding 184 hours of continuous playing, we received the first e-mails from the former record-holders in Japan, expressing their congratulations! From that time on we only played to keep our promise and see the timer changing from the initial 192:00:00 to 0:00:00. And so we made it at 3 p.m., on 1st July, before a huge audience and a lot of television cameras!
|
Since that moment, with 192 hours of continuous playing, Hungary has been the record-holder of the world’s longest concert, what is more, with a programme featuring the guitar in each of its sessions! This was not a requirement; it was our ‘encore’ to the record if we were to break it at a guitar festival! Celebration, cracking open champagne bottles and a goulash party closed this extraordinary event. On the Pier stage, uniquely in the world, the representatives of the classical and also lighter styles played together, including beginners, soloists and stars, all free of charge, only for the love of music! Everybody kept the five-minute time limit for changing turns, which was an awesome feat of virtuosity in case of bands! Not even those who played at night or at dawn were late and we had some really cold nights when performers tried to warm up their hands with the help of glasses full of warm water so that they could play! Among the staff you could find mainly amateurs and secondary school students, assisting the work of sound engineers and those who were accountable for the Internet broadcast.
|
 |
 |
In 6-hour turns, nearly thirty people did their best to ensure that no trouble could arise on the stage during the concert. They had really strict rules to see if everybody arrived in time, helped the musicians to get on the stage, kept the minutes, operated the cameras and the DVD recorder and took care for a million other things for 8 days, without a single mistake. The organizers, i.e. my wife and me, spent all our time next to the stage, totally exhausted, with 2-3 hours of sleep every day, however, we were happy to hear the endless flow of music. We had an audience as early as half past four in the morning, sitting there and listening to the concert. Some slept on the benches and we could see people staying after the performance of the rock band and listening in silence to the Geneva psalms of the next performer, József Dinnyés and I could mention a number of other experiences and wonders!
|
We made a real team during the eight days, a lot of members of which asked us to meet next year as well! Whether we will break our own record or the Japanese will take it back, it does not really matter. The Guinness World Record is only the frame: we and the music that we love are the picture! Soon photos of this event will be uploaded onto our web site and maybe videos too if we manage to arrange for substantial storage space. Stay tuned for the web site!
Kind regards,
József Eötvös
artistic director
|
 |
|
|
|
