The Haydneum - led by artistic director György Vashegyi, the founder and head of the Purcell Choir and the Orfeo Orchestra - was established with the aim, among others, of discovering and reviving, through its research activities, Hungary's early music past, restoring it as a public treasure, including by selecting from the hidden riches of such archives as the Esterházy collection at the National Széchényi Library, which preserves many precious rarities. It is neither for the first time nor for the last time this evening that the audience will get to hear compositions found among the precious gems of this music library being performed again after a quarter of a millennium of oblivion. Following the unknown, the second part will bring the familiar: the Mozart Requiem. Research has shown that the composer's large-scale oratorical work was inspired by a composition in the same genre by Michael Haydn, whom Mozart esteemed highly and followed as a model in more than one of his works. As a central interpretive workshop of historically informed early music performance in Hungary under the leadership of György Vashegyi, the Purcell Choir and the Orfeo Orchestra have been giving highly successful concerts and producing critically acclaimed recordings for more than thirty years.

Presented by: Haydneum - Hungarian Centre for Early Music