My love for choral singing started to develop even when I was a child. When I was singing with the Hungarian Radio Children’s Choir, I felt that this activity was my terrain, the one I felt at home in. I looked at the members of the adult choirs with admiration, thinking about how wonderful it would be to be engaged as an adult with what is now for me that most joyful way to spend one’s time. I am grateful that this became my profession.
For me, the exercise of my Christian faith and singing are closely linked and actually serve one another. Sacred music to me is an opportunity for prayer, giving thanks and praising God.
Although chamber singing is the closest to my personality and my soul, when 80 singers sing together, this has a special vibration that multiplies the singer’s possibilities, adding strength and energy through community and a love of music – it affects both the performers and the audience alike, and this cannot be created through any other musical formation. I think choral work builds character and purpose: to pass on the joy experienced during the performance of the choral work by multiplying it.
In today’s world, everything is all about competing and overcoming one another other [kell ide ez az other?], while singing in a choir creates a community based on creating a common, beautiful thing together.
My first real professional role model was János Reményi – then the chief choirmaster of the Hungarian Radio Children’s Choir – from whom I learned how to maintain a humanist attitude, along with the artistic and professional humility and the dedication to high standards that has affected my whole life, and who developed a kind of emotional and intellectual need inside of me. It was there that I first experienced high-quality, professional rehearsal work – as we prepared for, for example, Stockhausen’s opera Montag aus Licht, which we performed at Milan’s La Scala.
During my primary school years, I studied violin with László Dénes before continuing my musical studies at the Bartók Conservatory under Gábor Ugrin and Erzsébet Hegyi Legány and with a specialisation in solfège and music theory. I earned my first degree in voice-music and choral conducting from Eötvös Loránd University’s Faculty of Teacher Training (with János Reményi serving as my adviser for choral conducting, and Miklós Mohay for solfège and music theory).
I started my vocal training with Ágnes Soós Deli, then studied solo voice pedagogy and voice-chamber singing at the Faculty of Music of the University of Szeged, where Edit D. Szécsi was my adviser in voice and voice pedagogy and Mária Temesi was my vocal coach. During my years there, I attended courses taught by Éva Marton, Sylvia Sass and Adrienne Csengery, and professionally I also owe many thanks to Ilona Adorján, Bernadett Wiedemann, Mária Ardó, Ildikó Szakács and Zita Váradi. I have given solo recitals at Budapest’s Nádor Hall and at the Hungarian Culture Institute in Moscow. As a soloist, I mainly participate in Baroque, 20th-century and contemporary works as a permanent soloist of the Óbuda Chamber Choir (artistic director: Ákos Erdős) and as a member of the Cantus Corvinus Choir (artistic director: Géza Klembala). I have been a member of the Hungarian National Choir since 2011.
