BALÁZS SZOKOLAY

Balázs Szokolay is a thousand-faced pianist, one of the most outstanding masters of the international music life. As a chamber musician, Szokolay is in perfect harmony with his partner. Although he is a prominent Liszt-player, he is inspired by Brahms, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Grieg, Bartók's songs… In his concerts, the audience can’t get enough of the magical, special moments, the color rendering of the artist, the incredible emotional color scale of the artist's atmospheric capacity. Szokolay is an inspirational and inspired, full-fledged pianist, who plays piano with natural gesture, noble elegance, dignity and immeasurable professionalism without any unnecessary hype. Balázs Szokolay is one of Hungary’s best pianists who was born into a legendary family of musicians in Budapest in 1961. His father is a Kossuth prize winner composer, Sándor Szokolay. Balázs started to play the piano at the age of five, taught by Erna Czövek. Later, at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music, his professors included Klára Máthé, Pál Kadosa, Zoltán Kocsis, György Kurtág, and Ferenc Rados. Following his graduation in 1983, he won scholarships for two more years of studies in Munich and Moscow. He was instructed by Mikhail S. Voskresensky, Amadeus Webersinke, Ludwig Hoffmann and Yvonne Lefebure. Throughout the internationally renowned pianist’s career he has been awarded 14 competition prizes (Usti-nad-Labem, Zwickau's Robert Schumann, Leeds', Brussels' Queen Elisabeth, Glasgow, Munich's ARD, Terni's Alessandro Casagrande, Monza's Rina Sala Gallo, Montreal, Budapest etc.). More recently, he has been a frequent jury-member in major music competitions in countries such as the Netherlands , Italy, Bulgaria, Russia, Greek, Malta, Ukraine, China etc. He has given concerts and offered masterclasses in over thirty countries accross the world. His students won already more than 50 international prizes in different music competitions.

His repertoire covers a wide range of styles with a strong focus on chamber music. Balázs is an avid chamber player who has played with world class soloists and orchestras. Among his chamber music partners are Clemens Hagen, Aurèle Nicolet, Zoltán Kocsis, Miklós Perényi, Vilmos Szabadi, Bartok string-quartett, Shanghai Quartett, Gervaise de Peyer. As a soloist, Mr. Szokolay has performed with many orchestras, including the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra and the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle etc. In Belgrade, he replaced at the last moment Nikita Magaloff in the Brahms Concerto No. 1. To further expand his repertoire, Szokolay played harpsichord and conducted the Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in London. During his carrer way he has released countless albums. He has recorded extensively with Naxos , Hungaroton, and other recording companies. One of his Grieg-Naxos CDs was named "Record of the Year" by London' s Daily Telegraph in 1992. He has played numerous radio and television broadcasts at the request, among others, of the BBC - London, the RIAS - Berlin, the AVRO and TROS - Holland, the RAI - Torino, the CBC - Canada, and the Hungarian Radio and Television. During the 1997-98 academic year, he worked as a guest professor at Yeungnam University , South Korea. In the Spring Semester of 2006, he was invited as a Visiting Scholar and piano professor at Montclair State University in New Jersey, USA. In 2001, he was awarded the most prestigious Liszt Prize by the Hungarian Government. Balázs Szokolay is a guestprofessor from 2009 in the University of Graz. As one of the world’s most respected pianist masters he gives masterclass at the prestigious Festetics Palace, Keszthely for more than a decade. He has been a piano professor at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest since 1987. Since 2012, he is a piano professor at the University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar.