László Istvan Heltay (5 January 1930 17 December 2019) was a Hungarian-born British conductor and choral director. Heltay is best known for contributing to the establishment of the Brighton Festival Chorus, the Chorus of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and the Schola Cantorum of Oxford. He was described as: "...one of the finest and most inspiring choral trainers in the world...through his efforts the whole British choral tradition has been given a new look and a new set of standards to aim for." Early life and education Heltay was born in Budapest, Hungary, to László Heltay Sr, a scientist, and Gizella Heltay, née Somogy. After leaving school he studied at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music. At the academy, he studied under Lajos Bárdos and became a friend as well as a pupil of the composer Zoltán Kodály. Career After graduation, Heltay worked as a conductor for radio stations and local church choirs. Following the failed Hungarian revolution in 1956, he emigrated to Britain, arriving as a 26-year-old refugee speaking barely any English: all he possessed was his grandfather’s overcoat, a letter of recommendation from Kodály and a box of conducting batons. After attending a language school in Leeds he settled in London, where he cleaned offices in Oxford Street. From 1960 to 1964, Heltay studied for his MLitt at Merton College, Oxford. He had founded the college's Kodály Choir in 1957 and commissioned the composer to create a cantata from Arthur O'Shaughnessy’s ode We are The Music Makers for Merton’s 700th anniversary in 1964. As musical director at Merton, a post created for him, Heltay established in 1960 the Collegium Musicum Oxoniense choir, now the Schola Cantorum of Oxford. The choir’s purity of sound and its instrumental approach to the score challenged the more mannered styles prevalent in Britain at the time. Between 1964 and 1966, Heltay lived and worked in New Zealand, where he conducted the NZBC Symphony Orchestra and was Director of Music at the New Zealand Opera. He gave the antipodean première of Britten’s Albert Herring and claimed to have given Kiri Te Kanawa her first professional engagement before returning in 1967 to Britain to join Phoenix Opera as their conductor, with whom he worked for several seasons. In 1967, Heltay founded the Brighton Festival Chorus. Their festival debut was Walton’s Belshazzar's Feast, conducted by the composer, and for the next 27 years