“Every stage of our lives has different responsibilities. The period of the pandemic helped us a lot in recognizing it now, as every day we asked ourselves the question: “What is truly valuable?” Performing Hungarian contemporary song literature is the most valuable task I can serve today. I am in such a privileged position that 'The Four' (Csemiczky, Orbán, Selmeczi, Vajda) and other composers found my vocal chords inspiring – Emil Petrovics, for example, wrote his very last piece, a song cycle for me.

For performers, there is no more uplifting feeling than when someone writes music for them. It’s time to give the composers back some of the immeasurable joy I feel when they entrust me with their new works.

György Selmeczi and I share an intense friendship that goes back to decades. He is my musical soul mate. It is a true delight to play music together with him. We have put together a program that is a beautiful compendium of our song recitals. The focus is, of course, Bartók. The program starts with Selmeczi's László Fehér, preceded by Three Songs on folk lyrics, which alone is a wonderful reason to be a singer, and followed by Minutes Volantes, perhaps my most profound connection to György. Finally, we perform four songs from György Orbán's song cycle which brought a new era in my life of contemporary vocal music.”

– Éva Bátori