Stations: A Chamber Concert by Zsombor Tóth-Vajna and Audrey Gabor
Szervezés:
Stations: A Chamber Concert by Zsombor Tóth-Vajna and Audrey Gabor
This programme is held in Hungarian.
The concert titled Crossroads by Zsombor Tóth-Vajna and Audrey Gábor invites the audience on a special musical and spiritual journey, with the theme of the Passion at its center. Keyboard and vocal works alternate in the program: pieces performed on organ and harpsichord create the meditative framework into which the deeply devout songs from Henry Purcell’s collection Harmonia Sacra naturally fit. The program brings together different eras and moods, whose common focus is evoking the human side of the story of suffering. The aim of the concert is that listeners, through the music, become part of a kind of spiritual pilgrimage, experiencing the depths and quiet moments of the Stations of the Cross.
Audrey Gábor, an Australian-Hungarian soprano, was born in Sydney, where she also completed her university studies, receiving a double degree in vocal performance and drama in 2011. At the end of 2014 she obtained her master’s degree in opera performance at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music Opera School as a student of Maree Ryan. In 2015 she moved to Hungary, and since then has appeared as a soloist with, among others, the Szolnok, Alba Regia and Művész Symphony Orchestras. She made her debut at the Hungarian State Opera in Samu Gryllus’s work Two Women. Her more important roles include: Mercédès (Bizet: Carmen), Mimì (Puccini: La bohème), Susanna (Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro), Laetitia (Menotti: The Old Maid and the Thief), Amore (Gluck: Orpheus and Eurydice), Berta (Rossini: The Barber of Seville), Beth (Adamo: Little Women), Juno (Offenbach: Orpheus in the Underworld), La Paix (Campra: Tancrède) and Ernestine Hill (Boyd: Daisy Bates at Ooldea).
Zsombor Tóth-Vajna, an early keyboard-instrument specialist and conductor, graduated with distinction in harpsichord and organ performance from the Liszt Academy of Music as a student of Miklós Spányi and Borbála Dobozy, then continued his master’s studies at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, while also pursuing studies at the Faculty of General Medicine of Semmelweis University in Budapest. He is a frequent guest in concert halls both in Hungary and abroad, and in addition to numerous European countries he has also performed in the United States. Among his concerts so far, his appearances at Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s Cathedral in London stand out, where he was the first Hungarian to give a solo recital; he is also a regular guest at the Halle Handel Festival and London’s Handel House. A passionate chamber musician, over the course of his career he has worked with partners such as Erika Miklósa, Eszter Sümegi, Gábor Bretz, István Várdai, András Keller, Avi Avital, Kristóf Baráti, Júlia Pusker and Barnabás Kelemen.
Rock Troubadours (US, 70s): CSNY, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison, Roy Harper
