This new CD presents the world premiere recording of Michael Haydn's oratorio "Emperor Constantine I Campaign and Victory", performed here by Gyorgy Vashegyi, the Orfeo Orchestra and Purcell Choir.
Michael Haydn was a widely respected composer during his lifetime, but after his death he was almost forgotten in the shadow of the epoch-making art of his elder brother Joseph. Only in recent decades has his great oeuvre been gradually rediscovered.
The score of his oratorio "Emperor Constantine I Campaign and Victory" was long considered lost, but was only recently rediscovered in the Esterhzy Music Archive in Budapest and is now being presented as the first time on sound recording.
The work was written as an oratorio for Lent and first performed in Salzburg in 1762. The oratorio tells the story of Emperor Constantine I, who received a heavenly sign at the Battle of the Milvinian Bridge in Rome in 312, thereby achieving victory and converting to the Christian faith. Various allegorical figures such as Faith, Fortitude, Faintheartedness or Theology polemicise about Christian doctrine and faith until Constantine's victory becomes a certain fact. Michael Haydn sets this theological dispute to colourful and lush music, the artistry of which testifies to the high quality of the singers and especially the wind players at the Salzburg court.
Gyorgy Vashegyi was born in Budapest in 1970 and 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 18 he became a student of conducting under Ervin Lukcs at the Ferenc Liszt Music Academy in Budapest, obtaining his diploma with distinction in 1993. In 1990 he 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'Orfeo by Monteverdi for the first time in Hungary. Since then the two ensembles have become Hungary's leading early music group: their main repertoire ranges from Gesualdo to Haydn and Mozart, but they also perform later compositions.
