Péter Nagy Piano Recital A Zeneakadémia saját szervezésű programja

He teaches and gives concerts, is a chamber partner of top-notch artists (for instance, Kim Kashkashian), plays concertos and solo recitals, and yet Péter Nagy is still very much a hidden genius of the Hungarian school of piano. This one-man recital is designed as a way of getting to know him better and appreciate his artistic significance. The sensitive yet never sentimental Schubert interpreter has undertaken to perform two Schubert sonatas as well as the Bartók Dance Suite, something that is a challenge for him personally and as a pianist. The first Schubert sonata (four movements, in F minor) dates from 1818, and the other is in B major and was written just a few months before his death in 1828: the similarly four-movement work is enigmatic, a creation that has been analysed and interpreted in many different ways, prefiguring the composer’s tragic passing. The Dance Suite commissioned in 1923 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the unification of Pest, Buda and Óbuda never quite worked as a grand orchestral piece, and it certainly left people puzzled at its premiere in the Pest Vigadó: Dohnányi’s Festive Overture and Kodály’s Psalmus Hungaricus garnered considerably more acclaim at the time. “The thematic material of every movement is an imitation of peasant music. After all, the aim of the whole work was to put together a kind of idealized peasant music – you could say an invented peasant music,” wrote Bartók of his work, the piano version of which demands an artist of unassailable technique.