“FROM SHADOW TO LIGHT” – ONLINE EXHIBITION ON THE LIFE OF GYÖRGY CZIFFRA

Program leírás

1-30 June 2022

(Joint event of the György Cziffra Memorial Year and the Liszt Institute Brussels)

If God loves his creature, he will show him the greatest happiness and the greatest misery, says Thornton Wilder in his novel The Eighth Day of Creation. In the life of the world-famous Hungarian piano virtuoso György Cziffra (1921-1994), there was deprivation and plenty, persecution and celebration. This is the story of a career that is worthy of a novel, as part of a series of events celebrating the artist’s centenary.
Ernő Dohnányi helps the young man from a family of gypsy musicians to enter – at the age of eight! – Dohnohnányi, a young musician who, at the age of eight, was taught by Leó Weiner, György Ferenczy and Imre Keéri-Szántó. He was conscripted, fought in World War II, was taken prisoner by the Soviets, escaped and returned home to play the piano in the bars of the Pest nightlife after 1945. In 1950 he tries to escape abroad, but is captured and imprisoned with his wife. Only in 1956 is he able to emigrate to the West, to start a new life in France and finally start on the road to the world fame he deserves. But fate intervenes even in the life of the celebrated world star when his conductor son, J. György Cziffra died in a house fire in 1981 at the age of thirty-nine.
The exhibition traces the artist’s career, combining newspaper reports and reviews with chapters of his career – objective facts with subjective commentaries on his assessments. There are anecdotes from Cziffra’s fan Ferenc Puskás, who followed the artist from pub to pub in the Pest night to hear him play, and from the poet Győző Határ, who recalls Cziffra’s famous prisoner concert. The after-life of the work is also illuminated by the history of the Cziffra Foundation, the work of János Balázs, numerous documents from the Cziffra Festivals and Péter Eötvös’ Cziffra Psodia.
Curator: Eszter Veronika Kiss