Concerning this position, what ideas and goals have you already formulated for yourself?
I have lots of plans and ideas in my head that relate to my day-to-day professional work and – in connection with that – concert programmes. I would like to enrich the Choir’s repertoire with less frequently heard works and vocal styles as well as with performances that offer a more complex experience for the audience thanks to their exciting themes and expanded artistic means. Refreshing the traditional concert format can also provide new inspiration for work inside the Choir. And for me the most important goal in all this is to make the Choir’s high-quality unique sound, musical articulation and expression an unmistakable distinctive feature of the Choir.
When did you first meet or work with the Choir of the Hungarian National Radio?
I don’t remember exactly when this happened, but we collaborated on a few projects in the 1990s. However, in recent years we have had the opportunity to perform together on several occasions: as part of the Season Ticket Series ‘Ars Sacra’ and ‘Sapszon’, which are now very vivid memories to me.
What is your best experience with the Choir?
It’s always a pleasure to work with them. But a particularly memorable experience and intense period was the concert entitled ‘Autumn Chansons’ in the scope of the 2022 Season Ticket Series ‘Sapszon’: here we performed choral songs by Elgar, Poulenc, Rauravaara, Hindemith and Brahms to the audience’s great acclaim.
What makes the Choir of the Hungarian National Radio special?
The Choir is not only an outstanding ensemble of individually talented singers but also a good community, which provides a great source of cohesion to the group and effectively contributes to working together. Another great virtue of the ensemble is that their concerts combine professionalism with the freshness of the spontaneous joy of singing while they are concurrently able to cope, on a daily basis, with pieces of different styles and levels of difficulty and also perform at a high quality level.
These are important values, which I would like to further strengthen in the Choir.
Máté Szabó Sipos ©Nyirő Simon
In your opinion, how will a member of the audience or a listener be enriched through attending a concert by a choir?
Singing is one of the most fundamental and most extensive means of emotional expression. It is no coincidence that for centuries we have been expressing our most important thoughts, texts and stories through song: from the choruses of Greek dramas to folk songs and sacred texts, troubadours, bards and minstrels, up until to today’s rappers everybody used songs for that purpose. Due to the sensitivity and expressive power of the human voice, composers have also paid special attention to this “most sophisticated instrument”. While listening to a choir, we can experience all this in a multiplied manner: in this case music and message – in artistic unity – can touch the listener with the most direct power. I can’t think of any other experience like this.
What do you think is necessary to make going to choir concerts trendy again?
Nowadays it is essential to reach out to audiences, especially to young people, in new ways and using new methods. We see many good examples of this worldwide and, fortunately, also here in Hungary. In my experience, audiences can be highly motivated by exciting, thought-provoking, multifaceted performances that offer more than just the perfect rendition of musical works. I am having in mind the kind of performances where the selection of works and every detail of the performance are determined by a central idea and the very content that is waiting to be expressed artistically in a manner that is understandable and accessible to the audience. In this way, a choir concert offers not only musical experience but also rich intellectual experience. In fact, a lot depends on communication with the audience, because it is important to bear in mind that the members of the audience are not merely observers but they should also be understanding participants of every moment of the performance.
For those who are now getting acquainted with choral music, which piece or pieces would you recommend to start with?
There are countless interesting and beautiful pieces that can be listened to in the scope of excellent performances available on the internet. Nevertheless, I believe in the power of live performance, where the music created by a 50-member choir breathing together can convey thoughts and can reveal emotions with impressive and captivating power. This feeling can only be experienced live. So I would like to recommend that everyone should come and listen to concerts by the Choir of the Hungarian National Radio, where the audience is sure to have memorable experience.
So, please come to our concerts, and you will never regret it.