Peter Erdei's speech from Cork International Choral Festival

Peter Erdei gave this speech at the prizegiving ceremony at the festival this year:

Looking at what we have heard yesterday, we can say that one large part of repertoire – of the contemporary repertoire – has turned back from the atonal kind of choral music into a more understandable and more translatable language which will speak to the audience today. But also it goes beneath in an age where machinery is an everyday necessity in our lives. Somehow the computer age has had an input, an effect, on the composition of choral music: virtuosity, vocal excellence, spectacular vocal lines and extremely difficult rhythmic elements are intertwined with the most simple, traditional harmonies in today's choral music. And if you listen well you could witness and you could detect many choral pieces in this category.

It's quite clear, to find repertoire today is much easier than twenty years ago. We have the internet system, we have excellent publishers all over the globe, so to find good material is not a great problem. Yet, to find a programme which is unique, to construct a choral programme that represents the best qualities of our own choir and also represents the choral music of our own tradition, I find there have been two distinct categories this year. One category was working towards security, taking from the older periods of style and contemporary style – choral music which has already stood the test of time and it is here to stay. The language is understandable and the music is known in choral circles. This is very good because that can lead to success but also there were other choirs in the Fleischmann competition who took the initiative to construct a programme in another way, to have the innovative, to have the new, to have the one-time choral piece which might be written for their own choir, the own-time choral piece that might be first performed here in front of this public in Cork and that is very brave, but also if you have a good enough understanding of the capabilities of your own choir that can also lead to wonderful results.

So I would come back once again to my first sentence saying that this competition has been very high standard competition and I must say this competition has put Cork on the choral map in a very different way than the years before. If any of you were here last year I said "too many competitions in Europe" but not so many like Cork and I see again that this year's competition, because of the standard of the choirs who participated, has put Cork on the choral map in a very different way.

And finally, may I make one comment in regard to the fullness of this festival, not necessarily the Fleischmann competition but the Irish national competition. I have been chairing this committee for a few years continuously and I can see that out of the national competition grow choirs taking part in the premier national competition of Ireland, and out of the premier national competition grow Irish choirs taking part in the international competition, the Fleischmann competition, and having done so they take off into an international career and many choirs I have witnessed having done that and I think this is also due to the real in-depth organisation and the very well thought out programme that this competition is doing.

So, last but not least, the aim of the Cork Fleischmann competition is to preserve choral music and preserve quality and I think this year it has done just that. So ladies and gentlemen thank you for coming, choir singers thank you for taking part, good luck to you and keep doing what you are doing in the field and in the art of choral music. Thank you very much.