Programme

Adam Balogh is a classical pianist born in Hungary. Actively pursuing a career as a soloist and chamber musician, he is one of his generation’s promising talents.

Adam Balogh made his orchestral debut at the age of 13 with the Budapest Festival Orschestra under the baton of Ivan Fischer. Since then, he has performed with many important orchestras in his home country, including the National Philharmonic, Concerto Budapest, the Pannon Philharmonic, the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra. He gained further recoginition recently by winning the second prize of the Bartók World Competition, and the fifth prize of the Sydney International Piano Competition. He is also a prizewinner of Honens International Piano Competition.

He is a recipient of the Junior Prima Award and the Cziffra Festival’s Talent Award, as well as the Junior Tüke Award, given to outstanding young citizens of his home city, Pécs.

Joint concert of the Cziffra Stiftung

Támogató: Cultural Found of Hungary

Programme

Since her childhood, pianist Mónika Ruth Vida has been dedicated to the love of music. Her dream and ambition are to convey the joy and healing power of music to everybody. Despite her young age, she has already given concerts in most European countries and she has also toured Africa, the USA and several Asian countries. After gaining success on the Hungarian and international music scenes, she was as young as merely 14 years old when she won her first international competition in Serbia, which was soon followed by her debut in China at the Shanghai World Expo. As a multiple contest-winner, she received her latest first prize at the 5th Coimbra World Piano Meeting, and she has also received an award by the Italian Parliament in acknowledgment of her outstanding musical performances.

She graduated with honours from Franz Liszt Academy of Music in 2016 and in 2020. Her first great-scale concert series entitled “Neither Memories, Nor Magic” also premiered in Pesti Vigadó in September 2019. The year 2020 could not pass without rapt excitement for her: in recognition of her outstanding achievements in musical arts Mónika Ruth Vida received Hungary’s Junior Prima Award. But the greatest challenge so far awaiting Mónika Ruth Vida presents itself in 2021: she is the only Hungarian contestant to have received invitation to take part in the live rounds of the 18th Chopin Piano Competition.

Joint concert of the Cziffra Stiftung

Supporter: Cultural Found of Hungary

Programme

The Indian Summer in Levoča Festival (in Slovak: Levočské babie leto)  is a leading international annual musical celebration based in the historic east Slovakian town of Levoča, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Through the Festival, Levoča, the ancient capital of the county of Spiš, restores the region’s centuries-old tradition as a crossroads of arts and culture.

Gergely Devich  (cello) /  Ádám Balogh (piano) (Hungary)

Hommage to Cziffra

Zoltan Kodály – Sonata for cello solo
Claude Debussy – Sonata for Cello and Piano
Johannes Brahms – Four Ballades op. 10
Astor Piazzola – Grand Tango

Indian Summer in Levoca Festival

Performers:

Rousse Philharmonic Orchestra, János Balázs,
conductor: Dimitar Kosev, Miranda Liu – violin, Ilya Kondratiev – piano
and the best students of the master class

Supporter: National Cultural Found of Hungary

Private event, organised by Orient Institute and Liszt Institute Istanbul.

Supporter: NKA

Programme

The Istanbul International Music Festival is a cultural event held every June and July in Istanbul, Turkey. It offers European classical music, ballet, opera and traditional music performances with the participation of famous artists from all over the world. This year, the Hungarian, Kossuth Prize-winning pianist, János Balázs and the Sárközy Trio will perform on this renowned festival. They will pay tribute to the art of György Cziffra, and at the same time, combining classical music and gypsy music, they will present Hungarian and European musical traditions.

Supporter: NKA

Programme

Performed by János Balázs, Sinfonietta Cracovia, conductor: Ma­ciej Two­rek

Chopin and Liszt are two prominent figures of the Romantic Period; their oeuvres are the foundation of classical music. Both composers spent most of their lives in Paris, yet, as faithful patriots of their home countries, Chopin made Polish and Liszt Hungarian music popular in their works. The two nations didn’t only give these two renowned composers to the world, but they also cherish a nearly millennium-old friendship. This relationship woven by many threads is now strengthened by the joint concert of the Krakow Festival of Polish Music and the Budapest-based Cziffra Festival. The pieces featured at the concert will be interpreted by the excellent conductor Katarzyna Tomala-Jedynak, the Sinfonietta Cracovia and the pianist János Balázs from Budapest. János Balázs dedicates his performance to one of the greatest Liszt-interpreters of the 20th century, the pianist György Cziffra

The joint concert of the Krakow Festival of Polish Music and the Budapest-based Cziffra Festival.

Supporter: NKA

Program leírás

This special concert evokes the traditional café life of post-World War II. in Budapest. At that time, the night life was an integral part of not only the crunchy czardas dance, the jazz and the violin music, but also the exceptional piano playing of György Cziffra. The diverse and endless cavalcade of bars and locales were the symbol of a new chance in addition to a fresh start after the end of the world,  without limits and genre boundaries.

This thousand-colored and endless world is conjured up from the past by the Hot Jazz Band, with the wonderful vocals of Andrea Malek in the framework of the György Cziffra Memorial Year.

Ticket price: 12€

Further information: +421 907 674 724

A program a Cziffra György-emlékév és a Občianske združenie KulTúra KN közös szervezése

Whoever has heard János Balázs play only once in their life must have had a highly impressive and unique concert experience since the pianist has a great knack for reaching the audience and making the distance between performer and listener fade away. He achieves this by – besides his fascinating technique – the delicate subtlety of his performance, the spellbinding colourfulness of his tones and the incredible limitlessness of his dynamic scope. His concerts enlisting the repertoire of the 19th-century Golden Age take us on time travel: beyond being able to re-create the intimate atmosphere of the period’s great composers and pianists, such as Franz Liszt, János Balázs also revives the Romantic traditions himself with his own arrangements, transcriptions and fascinating improvisations. It is, therefore, no coincidence that he is a returning guest artist of Europe’s top-ranking concert halls and that he has collected nearly all professional and state decorations of his home country as well as the title Young Steinway Artist and the state award of Poland for performing Chopin’s complete piano works. In 2016, he launched the György Cziffra Festival, dedicated to preserving the intellectual and musical legacy of his great role model. In a repertoire also inherited from Cziffra, János Balázs reveals the very best of his skills and the most profound layers of his musicianship: in Liszt’s lyrically sensitive works and concert pieces with a Hungarian touch and his Schubert, Albeniz, and Ponce re-arrangements, regardless whether it is a contemporary piece or János Balázs’ own breathtakingly true, yet unique and honest arrangement.

A joint event of the Hungarian Academy in Rome and the György Cziffra Memorial Year.