Based in Budapest, the Orfeo Orchestra is a period instrument ensemble founded by György Vashegyi to perform with the Purcell Choir. It still does so, but it has gone on to perform orchestral music and opera independently of that group. György Vashegyi was a Hungarian conductor, multi-instrumentalist, and continuo player when he formed the Purcell Choir in 1990 for a performance of Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas. Similarly, he established the period instrument Orfeo Orchestra the following year to accompany a performance of Monteverdi's opera Orfeo, the first one in Hungary. Vashegyi intended the orchestra to follow an English early music model, with emphasis on hearing the sounds of individual instruments, and he recruited Baroque violinist Simon Standage as concertmaster to this end. Vashegyi remains the orchestra's conductor, and the group continues to perform with the Purcell Choir. In 1998, the Orfeo Orchestra made its recording debut on the Hungaroton label, backing the Purcell Choir on the album Istvánffy: St. Benedict Mass; Kraus: Requiem. As the orchestra developed, it also began to perform and record independently of the Purcell Choir. Its first all-instrumental recording came in 2002 with Tartini: Four Concertos for Violin and Orchestra, with violinist László Paulik. Between 2002 and 2007, the Orfeo Orchestra performed Haydn's first 80 symphonies composed at Esterházy Palace, Haydn's employer for many years, using the exact forces used by Haydn at the works' premiere performances. The group has been heard frequently at festivals both within and outside Hungary, including the Hungarian Haydn Society's Haydn Festival at Esterházy Palace and the Toujours Mozart Festival in Salzburg and Vienna. The Orfeo Orchestra has attracted increasingly prestigious guest conductors such as Helmuth Rilling, René Jacobs, Philippe Herreweghe, and Masaaki Suzuki. The orchestra moved to the Glossa label in 2016, backing the Purcell Choir on a recording of Grands Motets by Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville. The Orfeo Orchestra has toured well beyond Hungary, appearing at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam in 2019. It has continued to record for Glossa, where it was heard on a recording of Rameau's opera Les Fête d'Hébé in 2022. It has also been heard on the early music specialist label Palazzetto Bru Zane. ~ James Manheim, Rovi