The Pécs Chamber Choir was founded on 22 October 1958 by László Dobos and Aurél Tillai from among their friends and students. The choir’s members are teachers, doctors and other intellectuals, as well as university students. Many of the choir’s long-standing members are themselves conductors, and many of them have become internationally renowned conductors.

The choir is one of the finest choirs in the country. Their repertoire spans almost the entire choral repertoire. Their main goal is to promote the Hungarian classics (Kodály, Bartók, Bárdos) at home and abroad, but they also sing the choral music of the post-Kodály generations. They perform 20-25 times a year. So far they have toured 65 concerts in 20 European countries, most frequently in Germany, Italy and France.

They returned home with 35 prizes from international competitions. They won first and grand prizes in Cork, Tours (twice), Knokke-Heist, Debrecen and Spittal. In 1980, they won the chamber choir category of the BBC Radio Competition. In 2000, they won 3 first prizes at the Orlando di Lasso Choir Competition in Rome. In 2002, they returned from Preveza, Greece, with 2 gold medals.

They are regularly featured on Hungarian Radio, but have also been broadcast on radio stations in Helsinki, Turin, Paris, London, Brussels, Rome and Stockholm. They are regulars on the philharmonic scene, having performed more than 30 oratorios to date.

Since 1964 they have been the organisers and hosts of the Pécs Chamber Choir Festival. Following the success of this festival, Pécs hosted the 10th Europa Cantat Choir Festival in 1988, the first of the so-called socialist countries of the time to do so.

To date, 12 CDs have been released with the choir, 3 in France, 2 in Germany and 1 in England. Most of their CDs include works by 20th century Hungarian composers, two of them early music, one of them by György Lickl, an 18th century Pécs resident. A further CD contains a recording of Haydn’s oratorio “Creation”, recorded at the Hiroshima concert in San Francesco in Assisi in 1985. The series concludes with a disc of compositions by Aurél Tillai (2002).

Their conductor – from the very beginning – Aurél Tillai, professor emeritus, has been teaching choral conducting and music theory at the University of Pécs. From 1956 to 2000 he was the director of the University Choir of Pécs. Liszt and SZOT prize-winning conductor. Frequent participant in choir competitions and festivals as jury member and atalier-leader. Aurél Tillai, who led the Pécs Chamber Choir together with László Dobos for the first 20 years, is also a popular choral composer.

In 1991, the Educators’ House Choir Foundation was founded to ensure the functioning of the choir. The foundation was registered as a public benefit in 1998. Image and description source: http://www.ckh.hu/szervezetek/pecsi-kamarakorus