In memoriam Dénes Zsigmondy A Zeneakadémia saját szervezésű programja

He was the student of Géza Kresz at the Liszt Academy, but considered his most important teacher to be Leó Weiner, who taught chamber music. He quit Hungary during the war in 1944, and pursued an important career as concert violinist in Germany from 1946. Together with his pianist wife he played the entire chamber repertoire and travelled the world. It is not only in the unforgettable concerts and recordings that the memory of Dénes Zsigmondy is kept alive, but in many of his students, too. He started teaching at the age of 50, partly in American university departments and partly in master classes. His students pay tribute to the unforgettable ‘Zsiga’ who died this year at the age of 92: Isabelle Faust, the Kokas-Kelemen couple, the Pusker siblings, Gergely Kuklis, concertmaster of the Hungarian National Philharmonic, and Pál Jász of Concerto Budapest. In an interview Dénes Zsigmondy told a story typical of the man. He was in Budapest with his wife in the 1960s, performing in the Liszt Academy. On the night before the concert he visited Kodály. “He asked me about everything, about books, and I knew everything but I had never read anything. So we had a good chat. And then he looked at me and told me in a strict voice: ‘you must read’. The following day, he came down to see us in the dressing room in the interval, he hugged us both and simply said: ‘You don’t need to read anything’.”