Budapest's
Purcell Choir has been highly active in Hungary's musical life, and has participated in concerts, music festivals, and recordings with leading conductors and guest artists. Formed in 1990, the choir was the brainchild of director
György Vashegyi, while still a conducting student at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, and he first organized the group for concert performances of
Henry Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas. The choir, numbering around 30 professional singers, regularly performs with
Vashegyi's other handpicked ensemble, the
Orfeo Orchestra, and has recorded Baroque and early Classical music, including works by Jean-Philippe Rameau, Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Michael Haydn, and
Franz Joseph Haydn. The choir is frequently heard at the Hungarian Haydn Society's Haydn Festival, held at the Esterházy Palace in Fertöd, and the Toujours Mozart Festival in Salzburg and Vienna, and has also performed with the Cappella Savaria Ensemble under the direction of
Nicholas McGegan.