The Budapest Symphony Orchestra MAV, also known as the MAV Symphony Orchestra (not to be confused with the former Budapest Symphony Orchestra, now the Hungarian State Radio and Television Orchestra), is one of Hungary's top orchestras, comprising 90 professional musicians. Its name in Hungarian is MÁV Szimfonikus Zenekar. The initials MAV stand for Magyar Államvasutak, or the Hungarian State Railway, which founded the orchestra in 1945. The group is central to Budapest's concert life, performing at the city's most historic halls, the Palace of Arts, and the concert hall of the Franz Liszt Academy. Their repertoire ranges from the Baroque to contemporary music. The orchestra has instituted a chamber music series and a series of youth concerts, and it performs each year at the prestigious Budapest Spring Festival. In 1999 the orchestra was among a select group that participated in realizations of the famed Three Tenors concerts, and it has appeared all over Europe and toured in Lebanon as well (where they have appeared at the Beiteddine Festival), Oman, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, and the Far East, where they gave concerts in Tokyo's Suntory Hall and the Shanghai Asian Art Center. Guest conductors of the orchestra have included major international figures such as Kurt Masur, Herbert Blomstedt, Hans Swarowsky, and Kobayashi Ken-Ichiro who, since 2014, has been the orchestra's permanent guest conductor. Since 2012, the orchestra's chief conductor and artistic director has been Péter Csaba. He has led the Budapest Symphony Orchestra MAV in a productive recording relationship with the Naxos label in the 2010s. Beginning with an album of works by Miklós Rózsa in 2011, they have recorded underexposed Hungarian music, including several world premieres. They have devoted several albums to composer Eugene Zádor, issuing his Fantasia Hungarica for double bass and orchestra with other works in 2018. ~ James Manheim, Rovi