Harmonia Caelestis
soprano, alto, orchestra
Harmonia Caelestis Baroque Orchestra
“Something new and harmonious can be created from the sum of the different parts. The members of the orchestra are all different, individual people. Yet our goal is to create something together that connects us and our audience. And that is harmony in heaven.”
It was with this aim that Zsombor and Gergely Tóth-Vajna, a group of young musicians from the antiquity era, founded their ensemble, which they christened Harmonia Caelestis, inspired by the collection of Pál Esterházy. Since its formation, the ensemble has performed in a variety of different formations, from large orchestral pieces to smaller chamber music productions.
Their repertoire ranges from Renaissance polyphony to the symphonies of Mozart and Haydn, with a special focus on the instrumental and vocal works of Purcell, Handel and J.S. Bach. Their first concert series featured Handel’s Opus 1 sonatas, with the ensemble’s wind and string players performing as soloists with harpsichord accompaniment.
In recent years they have performed in major concert halls and festivals in Hungary, with a special focus on the Esterházy Castle in Fertődi, where they are invited as regular guests every year.
Andrea Csereklyei
Andrea Csereklyei, Hungarian soprano completed her vocal studies at the Teacher Training Institute of the Liszt Academy in Budapest and at the University of Debrecen. In 2018, she obtained her doctorate.
She made her debut on the opera stage in the role of Pamina, which is followed by recitals where she mainly performs as a soloist of classical and baroque oratories and operas. She often sings in song recitals (as a fan and connoisseur of Francis Poulenc’s songs) and participates in the premieres of several contemporary works. She is a frequent guest of leading Hungarian orchestras, and also sang – among others – under the direction of Helmuth Rilling, Graeme Jenkins, Umberto Benedetti Michelangeli, Ádám Fischer, Tamás Vásáry and György Vashegyi. She developed her singing skills at the masterclasses of Anna Reynolds, Júlia Hamari, Walter C. Moore, Adrienne Csengery and György Kurtág.
She has participated in a number of radio and television programs, and is the soloist of multiple records in the “World Premiere” series of baroque music, published by Hungaroton Records. She participated in the opera history TV-series entitled Opera Tales From Kolozsvár, produced for Hungarian Public Television.
She won 3rd prize at the Johann Strauss Song Contest in Vienna in 1999, and was awarded the Artisjus Prize in Hungary the same year. She won the Annie Fischer scholarship in 2000-2001. In 2007 she won the Special Prize at the International Händel Song Contest in Eger, and was a finalist at the L’Orfeo contest in Verona. She has been a guest artist in Vienna, Salzburg, Moscow, Cluj Napoca, Bucharest, Bratislava, Prague, the Hague, Florence, Munich, Stuttgart, London, Mexico and Beijing. She held successful masterclasses in the Czech Republic, Poland and China. Between 2019-2022 she was awarded a scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Arts. She works as a voice training teacher at the Academy of Music and as an associate professor at the University of Miskolc.
Dalma Krajnyak
Dalma Krajnyak Hungarian mezzo soprano, considers herself a baroque singer first of all, but she is also devoted to the late romantic song- and concert repertoire as an alto soloist.
She accomplished her BA studies in Classical Singing in Hungary, while she already decided to improve her skills abroad as well: Dalma studied one semester at the Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello in Venice by the Erasmus programme. She received her PGAD degree as a scholar at the Trinity Conservatoire in London, and after finishing her postgradual studies there, Dalma moved to Italy to hone her skills. She attended the Accademia Lirica di Osimo, under the supervision of the Artistic director M. Vincenzo de Vivo.
During her studies Dalma also took part as a scholar in prestigious non-baroque YA Emerging Programmes, like the Accademia Rossiniana with M° Alberto Zedda in Canada, where she sang the role of Tancredi and Isaura, or L’Olimpiade by Myslivicek, a co-project of Scuola dell’ Opera Italiana and Teatro Communale di Bologna.
In order to widen her knowledge in the particular field of baroque vocal repertoire, she attended various masterclasses held by Romina Basso, Vivica Genaux and Sara Mingardo.
Dalma performed on several concerts in North-central Italy: alto solo of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater in Pesaro, alto solo of Bach’s Matthias Passion in the Dome of Modena, the Sorceress In Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in Bologna, the title role of the oratorio ’San Contardo dell’Este’ at the Modena Organ Festival and the role of Melanto in Monteverdi’s ’Il ritorno di Ulisse in patria’, a staged production of the Festival ’Corti, chiese e cortili’ in Bologna.
Besides her career in Italy, Dalma gained professional experience in various concerts in England, she sang alto solo in Handel’s Messiah at the National Auditorium in Madrid under the direction of Jonathan Cohen, she worked as a soloist with the Savaria Baroque in Hungary and also sang the alto solo of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with the Göttingen Barock in Germany.
Zsombor Tóth-Vajna
A specialist in early keyboard instruments and a conductor, Zsombor Tóth-Vajna is one of the outstanding figures of this generation of young Hungarian musicians.
At the Liszt Academy in Budapest, he graduated with honours in harpsichord and organ as a pupil of Miklós Spányi and Borbála Dobozy, then completed a Master’s degree in the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, where he graduated in organ, harpsichord, fortepiano, and clavichord under Menno van Delft, Richard Egarr, and Jacques van Oortmerssen. He studied conducting with Howard Williams and Zsolt Hamar. In addition, he completed studies at the General Medicine programme at the Faculty of Medicine, Semmelweis University in Budapest.
He is a frequent guest at concert venues in Hungary and abroad, from the Thomaskirche in Leipzig to Westminster Abbey in London, and he has appeared as keyboard soloist and conductor not only in many countries in Europe, but also in the United States.
He has made recordings for Hungarian Radio and Hungarian Television, including some with András Batta, to popularize early keyboard music. He is the founder and artistic director of the Harmonia Caelestis Baroque Orchestra, founded in 2015, and his passion for keyboard music for four-hands finds expression in the Piano e Forte Duo, with his twin Gergely.
He further perfected his keyboard skills at masterclasses with Pierre Hantai, Skip Sempé, Ton Koopman, Masaaki Suzuki, Malcolm Bilson, Lorenzo Ghielmi, Christine Schornsheim, Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini, Jon Laukvik, Andreas Staier, and Hans Fagius. As a teacher, he has given masterclasses in Hungary and abroad, and has been a member of the juries at international competitions. In 2020 he gained a scholarship for a doctorate at the Royal College of Music in London.
His field of research is performance practice in seventeenth-century English keyboard music. To date, he has released nine solo CDs. In 2013, Zsombor Tóth-Vajna earned the highest recognition of the Semmelweis University, the Kerpel Prize, in 2015 the magazine La Femme included him in the list of the fifty most talented young people in Hungary, and in 2019 he won the Bach Festival Prize.