“Over the past week, Attila Kovács has been playing music to entertain the residents of Budapest, just as he has done for more than three decades as a viola player in the city’s MAV symphony orchestra,” writes Shaun Walker in Monday’s (4/6) Guardian (U.K.). “These days … because of the coronavirus crisis … every day, musicians from the orchestra drive two cars mounted with loudspeakers around Budapest and its surroundings, belting out recordings of past performances. It is currently forbidden to leave the house except for essential activities in Hungary… The reaction over the past week has been almost universally positive, said Kálmán Kovács, a trumpeter in the orchestra who has been driving one of the cars…. If people want to request an appearance near their homes, they can message the orchestra’s Facebook account with their address…. ‘Today we have a crisis and I think people need to be cheered up and given a little hope,’ said György Lendvai, the orchestra’s managing director. ‘But right now we cannot do it with an orchestra. So we thought that we could bring music by car to all the people in quarantine in their home.’ ”
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