| Hangszer | conductor |
The Hungarian conductor and harpsichordist, György Vashegyi, started his musical studies as an instrumentalist: he played the violin, flauto dolce, the oboe (then the baroque oboe) and the harpsichord. At the age of 16 he gave his first concert as a conductor and at only 18 he became a student of conducting under Ervin Lukács at the Ferenc Liszt Music Academy in Budapest, obtaining his diploma with distinction in 1993. He was a frequent participant in the conducting mastercourses of John Eliot Gardiner and Helmuth Rilling and, from 1994 to 1997, he was a student in the continuo master-class of John Toll at the Academy of Early Music, Dresden, where he also studied chamber music with Jaap ter Linden and Simon Standage. He played as a continuo-player in leading Hungarian chamber orchestras such as the Ferenc Liszt Chamber Orchestra and Concerto Armonico.
In 1990 György Vashegyi founded the Purcell Choir in Budapest for a concert performance of Purcell's Dido & Aeneas, and one year later the Orfeo Orchestra (performing on period instruments), with which he performed the complete L'Orfeoby Monteverdi for the first time in Hungary. Since then the two ensembles have become the youngest of Hungary's leading early music groups: their main repertoire ranges from Gesualdo to Haydn and Mozart, but they also perform later compositions.
György Vashegyi works primarily with his own ensembles but also gives concerts with other early music groups (Concerto Armonico, Capella Savaria and Musica Aeterna) as well as with modern symphony orchestras (National Philharmonic Orchestra, Hungarian Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra, Concerto Budapest, Budapest Concert Orchestra, Sinfonietta Hungarica, Cluj Philharmonic Orchestra, Pécs Symphony Orchestra, Szolnok Philharmonic Orchestra, Miskolc Symphony Orchestra, 'Ernõ Dohnányi' Youth Symphony Orchestra, etc.) and chamber orchestras (Prague Chamber Orchestra, Budapest Strings and Erdõdy Chamber Orchestra) as a guest conductor.
