Hungarian Choral Convention

For more than three decades, the Association of the Veszprém City Mixed Choir has been hosting an internationally scaled choral festival almost every summer. The Europa Cantat Singing Weeks, American-Hungarian Choir Meetings and Vivace festivals have attracted choirs from around the world to this event. Changes in domestic and international choir life, along with our opportunities, later led us to invite ensembles closer to us for meetings and presentations.

Since 2018, we have organised the Hungarian Choir Meeting in early June, around the weekend closest to National Unity Day (June 4). The festival creates a unique meeting opportunity for Hungarian choirs operating in the Carpathian Basin and the western diaspora. The choirs from beyond the borders and the host Veszprém City Mixed Choir prepare joint programs and individual performances, which are also open to the public.

In 2023, the year of the European Capital of Culture, the three-day Hungarian Choir Meeting became part of the large-scale Dalvölgy program, to which approximately 1,200 additional singers from Hungary arrived. Alongside numerous concerts in Veszprém and the EKF region, the Gala Concert featured blocks of performances from Hungarian choral music for five hours in Veszprém! As the host of the festival, the Veszprém City Mixed Choir organizes a program series that showcases its own repertoire and the beloved pieces of the choir family members, including the Mixed Choir, VVV Vocal, Dúdoló Folk Music Workshop, and Seniors. There is always the opportunity for collaborative work, guest presentations, and professional workshops.

The backbone of the program consists of joint rehearsals, concerts, and workshops. The conductors of the invited choirs, along with Ágnes Erdélyi, the artistic director of the meeting, shape the repertoire, which is preceded by joint rehearsals before its presentation in the gala program. Our goal is for outstanding choirs from beyond the borders and from here to meet in Veszprém, to sing for each other and together, and to strengthen each other musically and spiritually. Since 2018, we have hosted 20 choirs from Slovakia, Transylvania, Vojvodina, the western diaspora, and domestically—only from Transcarpathia have we not managed to welcome guests due to COVID and the war! In 2024, the 130-member VVV choir family welcomed 180 singers from Rimaszombat, Cluj-Napoca, Komárom, Bakonybél and Vác.