One of the art directors of the Chamber Music Festival of the Liszt Academy receives a prestigious international recognition

23 May 2019

Liszt Prize winner, Bartók-Pásztory Prize winner and Prima Prize winner pianist Dénes Várjon has received a prestigious international music award for his album Es war einmal.

The album, published last year by Myrios, won the chamber music category of this year's International Classical Music Awards. The album features the Hungarian artist playing the works of Schumann and Widmann with viola player Tabea Zimmermann and clarinet player Jörg Widmann.

 
 
Photo: Misi Kondella

 

"It’s especially important to me that we received this prestigious award for a recording featuring Schumann's wonderful chamber works, and a piece with a very personal background. Jörg Widmann wrote his trio for clarinet-viola-piano with Tabea Zimmermann especially for us. The author said he was mainly inspired by our common musical performances and, because this work is a tribute to Schumann, our enthusiasm for Schumann’s music."

The award given at the grand gala in the Luzern Congress and Culture Center has a special rank among the awards for classical music records, as the winners are not selected by critics or experts from a single country (such as British Gramophone, the German Opus Klassik or the French Diapason d'Or), but an international jury from seventeen countries. Therefore, this is the world's leading independent record award, and the decision is not influenced by business and commercial considerations. A total of 316 recordings were nominated for the award in sixteen categories.

Dénes Várjon’s next performance in Hungary will be on May 25 & 26 at the Liszt Academy in the last events of a special series of six concerts, where the outstanding pianist will play all chamber music pieces by Schumann. The concerts will be performed by Dénes Várjon, Tabea Zimmermann and Jörg Widmann.

 

The last Hungarian winner of the International Classical Music Awards was Gábor Boldoczki, a trumpet player who received the award in the contemporary music category for his album Oriental Trumpet Concertos in 2017. Among others, he plays the works of Penderecki and Hacsaturján with the Sinfonietta Cracovia, conducted by Jurek Dybal. In the previous year, an album featuring Annie Fischer's 1960 performance at the Lucerne Festivals (Schumann's Piano Concerto with the Philarmonia Orchestra, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini) and a 1962 concert with Leon Fleischer and the Swiss Festival Orchestra (with conductor György Széll) playing Beethoven’s 2nd piano concerto, received the award in the historical recordings category.