Welcome to the 20th Börzsöny Baroque Days early music festival

This year Börzsöny Baroque Days has reached its twentieth anniversary. In 2004 we organised a small series of three concerts, then called the Nógrád Baroque Days, in cooperation with gambist Sándor Szászvárosi. We did not have the idea that this would become one of the longest-running, free-to-attend art festivals in the Danube Bend region. In these two decades, despite all the difficulties, even during the covid pandemic, we have continued organising the concert series, which has since doubled in size. Our concept has remained unchanged: to bring top-level early music concerts to the churches in the picturesque villages of Börzsöny and the Danube Bend. One of the highlights of the festival’s history was the performance of the English vocal group, the Hilliard Ensemble in 2007, followed by a concert by London Baroque in 2008. Furthermore, and perhaps even more importantly, over the past twenty years we have hosted most of the chamber music groups and soloists from the Hungarian early music scene.

The concerts are regularly accompanied by exhibitions, liturgical programmes, and this year will be no exception: the concerts will be preceded by vespers with Renaissance vocal polyphony, and to mark the anniversary, a photo exhibit of the previous festivals will be on display at the concerts. Besides Sebastian Consort, the festival’s ensemble in residence, you can hear Recercare Early Music Workshop, Ensemble Metatron, Custos Consort and Capella Coronata in a colourful programme ranging from early Renaissance to high Baroque. The concerts will present a wide variety of historic instruments with the human voice playing an important role, too. As organisers, we are committed to spreading early music in the entirety of the cultural scene. Therefore, it is our great pleasure that the festival will feature an excellent amateur choir, Partiscum Choir from Szeged, which has already achieved a lot of success in both national and international choral competitions. They will join Sebastian Consort to perform Vivaldi’s Gloria at the closing concert. This year we are honoured to organise the festival in cooperation with Haydneum — Hungarian Centre for Early Music Foundation.

We feel that the enthusiasm, love of music and support of our loyal audience, some returning for long years, is what keeps the festival alive and gives us the strength to continue. In a particularly difficult financial situation with significantly less funding this year, we have launched a fundraising campaign. We have already received a lot of donations from the fans of Börzsöny Baroque Days, for which we are extremely grateful. If you would also like to support our festival, you can find information about how to donate below. We are happy that together we can organise the festival with a programme worthy of the jubilee year, for your, the artists’ and our own pleasure and enjoyment.

Imre Lachegyi
recorder player, festival director

Cooperative partners

Haydneum — Hungarian Centre for Early Music Foundation
Haydneum — Hungarian Centre for Early Music Foundation is supported by the Prime Minister’s Office and the Bethlen Gábor Fund Management