Saturday 2 October 2021, 11.00

GAMES WITH BARTÓK – OR THE SOUND OF FOLK MUSIC IN CLASSICAL MUSIC
INTERACTIVE CONCERT WITH GÁBOR ECKHARDT

Benczúr Ház (1068, Budapest, Benczúr u. 27.)

How can we make listening to music natural, or make music history enjoyable?
With images, rhymes, and sounds!
This is what Liszt Prize-winning pianist Gábor Eckhardt aims to do in his informal programmes full of humour, which have long been popular with children and adults alike.
He manages to connect the markedly visual bias and everyday world of today’s young people with quality sound experiences and the knowledge linked to them.
In today’s programme we discover the musical world of Béla Bartók through his field work collecting folk music and his works for piano. Let’s investigate the ‘pure source’ together

Performer

Gábor ECKHARDT began his musical studies at the Zoltán Kodály Primary School for Singing and Music. In 1975, after graduating from the Béla Bartók Secondary School of Music, he was admitted to the second year of the piano course at the Liszt Academy of Music. His teachers were Sándor Falvai and György Kurtág. He attended a two-year post-graduate course at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, studying with Dmitri Bashkirov. In 1980, he was awarded first prize in the Dohnányi Piano Competition at the college.

He is an active performer both at home and abroad. In 1996 he was awarded the Liszt Prize. As a dedicated interpreter of Hungarian contemporary music, he has been awarded the Artisjus Prize several times and the Oeuvre Prize in 2012. He was a founding member of the Intermodulation Chamber Ensemble led by László Tihanyi. He formed the Trio d’Echo with András Horn (clarinet) and György Déri (cello). From 2003–2009 he was a member of the Budapest Festival Orchestra.

He teaches piano at the Liszt Academy of Music. His pupils have successfully performed in national and international piano competitions, many of them becoming renowned artists. He regularly gives master classes and further training courses, not only in Hungary but also in Europe and Asia. He has participated as a jury member or jury president in numerous competitions in Hungary and abroad (Austria, Germany, Slovakia, Serbia, Japan, China, Vietnam, etc.). He was the editor of the second volume of the score of György Cziffra’s ‘Transcriptions’. He is a popular presenter with both children and adults.