Group.

The Honved Male Choir founded in 1949 in Budapest - the only professional male choir in Europe - is a curiosity not only in Europe but unparalleled nearly all over the world. Their sound merges the range and power of Slavonic choirs with the exceptional emotional sensitivity and expressiveness characteristic of Central European choral musical culture.

The ensemble that currently works with 44 singers is elevated to the top of European choir by its artistic openness, dedication to educating talents and high professional standard. The dramatic power, tremendous voices, the dark tone of the basses coupled with smoothness and virtuosity combine the traditions of East and West.

The choir sings almost every genre, period and style of music literature. From Gregorian chants to contemporary music, from Russian church music through opera to jazz a wide variety of genres and styles are to be found on their repertoire.

Beside the representation of Hungarian music and the male choir literature, a particular merit of the choir is that they are able to perform such compositions (e.g.: Brahms: Rinaldo, Wagner: Apostles Dinner, Weil: Berliner Requiem), that are hardly ever heard in concert halls of the world because they are extremely hard to perform.

The Honved Male Choir has recorded some 50 CDs. Their new release in preparation includes Mendelssohn's secular works for male choir and a selection of Hoffmeister's wine songs, which is a real curiosity. The choir has sung the world premiere of Fanz Liszt's Four Elements cantata based on the composer's manuscript found in Weimar. In 2005 they also performed the new orchestral version of the composition.

The choir worked with such renowned conductors as Antal Dorati, Lamberto Gardelli, Zubin Mehta, Giuseppe Patane, Juri Simonov, Sir Georg Solti, Janos Ferencsik, Ivan Fischer.

The Honved Male Choir was given the Bartok Bela-Pasztory Ditta Prize in 1998.

In recent year the choir gave concerts in 9 countries, they sung Liszt's Requiem at St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome and their Bartok concert was a tremendous success in many places abroad. At the Grand Teatro Fenice in Venice they gave such an outstanding performance at a German staging of Wagner's Lohengrin that they were invited by the theatre's management to give a concert as well.