The founding members of Aura Musicale began their passionate exploration of historical music in the 1980s – at a time, when it was officially held in contempt, looked down on, and even frowned upon. To begin with, they specialized in purely string, consort music, however with the addition of wind players made them versatile performers in various formations. Members of the Aura Musicale regularly appear with the leading historical performance ensembles of the world, among them the Les Musiciens du Louvre, the Le Concert des Nations, the Wiener Akademie, and the Concentus Musicus Wien. The artistic director of the ensemble is Balázs Máté, who has played, and continues to play concerts as a cello soloist under Jordi Savall, Marc Minkowski, Martin Haselböck and Nikolaus Harnoncourt.

Aura Musicale, the name of the ensemble, refers to that individual and powerful radiance that characterizes the music, the composer and the musical era, which they, as musicians transmit in each of their performances. They are not satisfied with a pleasant sound, but rather look for how the dramaturgy of the music works, and what is in there to stir us up.

Lead by Liszt-Prize winning cellist Balázs Máté, the ensemble debuted in 1995 at the Würzburg Early Music Days, and went on to appear at such outstanding international festivals as the Sacred Music Days of Tyrol, the Eckartsau Palace Concerts, the Sopron Early Music Days, the Budapest Early Music Forum, or the Ambraser Schlosskonzerte. Their performance at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival in 2007 was a real milestone, appearing as the celebrated emissaries of Hungarian musical culture playing the music of Kusser, Biber, Vivaldi, and Corelli in a three-concert series. They gave the Hungarian premiere of Cesti’s opera, Orontea at the Hungarian Academy of Music in 2016, playing in a 17^th-century orchestral formation rarely, if ever heard in Hungary.

The repertoire of Aura Musicale is remarkably rich and varied, even by the standards of early music ensembles: it stretches from the beginnings of the Baroque up to the Early Romantic Period, thus the works of Monteverdi, Handel and Bach are among them, as are those of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, and even Rossini, alongside numerous rare gems awaiting discovery. They have published nearly a dozen highly acclaimed world premiere recordings with Hungaroton Records.