Endowed with a superb voice and an unparalleled sense of style, the French tenor Cyrille Dubois has demonstrated his extraordinary talent in several Budapest productions, each time singing under the baton of György Vashegyi.

We also have the collaboration between these two artists to thank for this special concert programme, in which the conductor, so receptive to the treasures – both well-known and recently rediscovered – of the French musical literature and committed to popularising them, will this time perform works with religious themes, including outright sacred works – with one exception – from the second half of the 19th century.

The names of half of the composers – César Franck, Camille Saint-Saëns, Jules Massenet and Charles Gounod – on this programme will certainly be well known to everyone, even if their works scheduled for performance at the concert may seem new to us.

The pieces by Théodore Gouvy, Henri Maréchal and even Gabriel Pierné, who devoted a large-scale 1902 oratorio to the Children’s Crusade, are likely unfamiliar to the Budapest audience. But now we will get the valuable opportunity to experience their uplifting compositions up close.