Music for babies and mothers
On 1 January 2013, the General Director of the Hungarian State Opera presented to the first child born in Hungary in the New Year the first copy of the Útravaló (For the Road) CD, which was also received by the family of every Hungarian new-born (whether in Hungary or abroad) in the so-called Promobox package. As the age of CDs came to an end, the Opera also went down a new and more cost-effective road: the eighth For the Road album was made available online. Instead of a physical medium, the boxes provided by Promobox contained informative documents and a recommendation for the Opera’s children programmes.
The 2021 album is the ninth in the series including recent recordings of two compositions, Misa Criolla and Navidad Nuestra by the Argentinian composer Ariel Ramírez (1921–2010). The prayers from the mass inspired by folk traditions and the movements of the Christmas oratorio can now be heard in instalments featuring soloists István Horváth (tenor), Zsolt Haja (baritone) the Hungarian State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Gábor Csiki), accompanied by Pálma Hidegkuti (piano), László Halász (guitar), Anna Nagy (harmonica), Dávid Hornyák (double bass), Gáspár Szente, Péter Boegán and Bertalan Ur (percussion) conducted by István Dénes.