Lunchtime Organ Recital Services: Zsombor Tóth-Vajna (Royal College of Music)
- Occurring
- for 30 mins
- Venue
- The Temple Church, London
- Address The Temple Church, Temple, London, EC4Y 1BB, United Kingdom
John Blow (1649–1708)
Psalm 100 · Jubilate Deo
Verse in C Major, No. 2 · after Girolamo Frescobaldi’s Toccata XII
Voluntary in G Major, No. 14
Voluntary in G Minor, No. 18
Psalm 148 · Laudate Dominum de caelis
Verse in G Major, No. 10
Voluntary in G Minor, No. 17
Voluntary in D Minor · after Johann Jakob Froberger’s Ricercar in D minor
Psalm 113 · Laudate, pueri, Dominum
Zsombor Tóth-Vajna is a Hungarian organist, harpsichordist and conductor, and one of the leading international performer-scholars specialising in the organ music of John Blow and English Restoration keyboard repertoire. His work brings historical research into direct dialogue with performance on period instruments, with particular emphasis on reconstructing the sound world and performance practices of late seventeenth-century England. He studied harpsichord and organ at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest with Miklós Spányi, graduating with highest honours, before continuing his studies at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam with Menno van Delft, Richard Egarr and Jacques van Oortmerssen. He also holds a degree in medicine from Semmelweis University in Budapest. At the Royal College of Music in London, Tóth-Vajna devoted his doctoral research to the performance practice, stylistic context and organ culture of Restoration England, with particular emphasis on John Blow. Combining manuscript and archival research with practical experimentation on surviving and historically informed instruments, his work explores organ building, registration, ornamentation, improvisation and musical rhetoric. His research reassesses Blow as a principal architect of post-Restoration English organ culture, and this repertoire has become a central field of his international scholarly and performing activity. He has performed widely across Europe and the United States as a soloist, conductor and continuo player. He is founder and artistic director of the Budapest-based baroque orchestra Harmonia Caelestis and specialises as a conductor in historically informed performance, particularly Purcell, Handel and Bach. With his twin brother Gergely he also appears as the Piano e Forte Duo. He has released ten solo recordings. His distinctions include the Kerpel Prize of Semmelweis University (2013), the Hungarian Bach Prize (2019), the Honorary Medal of Buda Castle and the Hungarian Gold Cross of the Order of Merit (2024). In 2025 he received the Liszt Ferenc Prize, and in 2026 the Pro Cultura Hungarica Award.