Wonder of Wonders

Lajos Bárdos (1899-1986), composer, musicologist, teacher, and choral conductor, laid down, together with Kodály, the foundations of 20th-century Hungarian choral music. Through his work as a conductor, he raised the standards of Hungarian choral singing to an international level in a few decades.

His compositions were directed towards cultivating Hungarian choral life: they draw on Renaissance polyphony and Hungarian folk music, following Kodály and Bartók. His works, which are models of choral writing, deal sensitively with Hungarian prosody and radiate an inner harmony and vigor. A selection of his most popular choral works has been published with English texts by Gail Needleman in five volumes.