"He plays the piano even better than György Cziffra," said Tamás Vásáry, the Kossuth Prize-winning pianist and conductor. János Balázs was delighted and grateful for this remark, yet for him the path blazed by Ferenc Liszt, György Cziffra and the countless followers of the ‘Liszt school’ is an example to be followed, which can be approached and represented even at a young age, but it takes a lifetime’s work for an artist to be worthy of his predecessors.
One of Hungary's most sought-after and successful pianists, a regular performer in concert halls around the world, an artist beloved and respected by audiences, colleagues, critics and students alike, he lives his professional life with humility, and demanding of himself unwavering focus, continuous work and an unceasing desire for artistic development.
Childhood and studies
Pianist János Balázs was born on 19 September 1988 in Budapest. Although he has been surrounded by music since birth — primarily jazz and bar music, as his father was a pianist and his grandfather a cellist who often played with György Cziffra – he chose the path of classical music as a young child.
He took his first musical steps under his father's guidance, but when it became clear that his true interest was really in classical music, the family sought the help of pianist Kálmán Dráfi. Balázs's future master at the Liszt Academy sent the young boy to the Járdányi Pál Music School, to study with one of the most outstanding piano teachers, Erika Becht. Their work began with the very basics — learning to read music — since the music-loving boy had, until then, played everything "by ear", in whatever way pleased him. Guided purely by instinct, he would reinterpret melodies by Beethoven, Schubert or Schumann based on his childlike intuition. According to his first teacher, his entrance audition for music school was both brilliant and daunting, as he played a Beethoven sonata, half of which he had rewritten from his own musical imagination. However, after mastering the reading of music, he was "willing" to perform what and how the great composers had once written it.
Thanks to his first music school competition victory — and the concerts that went with it — he started building his repertoire at a very young age. By the time he was accepted, at the age of 14, into the Special Talents Class of the Liszt Academy, he had not only acquired a solid repertoire but also gained considerable performing experience. To this day, he encourages his students to start performing and learning works as early as possible, because it will be much harder to catch up later, as adults, and those who consciously expand their repertoire from a young age, will have a huge advantage.
The pianist has been a prominent figure of the Hungarian concert scene since the age of 16, when he won the Franz Liszt International Piano Competition. By the time he graduated, he had added 5 more major competition victories and numerous prizes to his name. From his student years into young adulthood, he travelled widely, competed and won many competitions from Hungary to Japan and America, winning, in 2011, Japan’s International Nishinihon Music Competition, and in 2012, the György Cziffra International Piano Competition in France and the Aspen Concerto Competition in the USA. Yet he feels that music defies scoring and ranking and considers competitions a ‘necessary evil’. Even so, thanks to these contests, and to the concert invitations as well as the national and international contacts they brought, by the time he began his studies at the Liszt Academy as a student of Kálmán Dráfi, at the age of 18 or 19, he had already made his name known to concertgoers at home and abroad. Living up to all this required a huge amount of work, constant learning and development, both as a professional and as a person.
"True artists can only really soar if they grow as a person", says János Balázs, "When I walk out on stage and play, the concert is not only about the notes, but also about my soul. And to be able to share my soul with the audience, constant personal development is essential."
The Cziffra Festival
He studies a lot of music, which is part of his goal as a pianist: to live up to the legacy of Ferenc Liszt and György Cziffra.
"Liszt's personality is closest to me, for he is the father of all pianists. For Cziffra he meant everything and followed him all his life."
He had listened to György Cziffra's recordings already as a child, and the artist's oeuvre unfolded for him in his teens, after reading the legendary pianist’s biography. It was then that he began to ask himself why Cziffra was absent from the public consciousness, why he was not talked about, why he did not occupy his rightful place in Hungary’s musical life. At the age of 14,, as a young student in the Liszt Academy’s Special Talents Class, János Balázs asked the then rector of the Academy, András Batta, for permission to organise a Cziffra memorial concert in the Small Hall (now called the Solti Hall). The concerts, which were initially attended by only a few fellow students and teachers, soon attracted greater interest, with the music-loving public also coming to attend the student initiative, which was supported with total dedication by the Academy’s leadership. The growing success of the annual concerts gave János Balázs the courage to dream on a larger scale. Perhaps one concert a year was not enough, perhaps others would like to accept an invitation to play at the concerts. Perhaps, for the sake of Cziffra's former students, his many admirers in Hungary and abroad, and the interested public, it was worth envisaging a multi-day festival...
The four concerts of the first festival, held in 2016 — featuring Tamás Vásáry, Béla Szakcsi Lakatos and Ferenc Snétberger, among others — were an unexpected success. An important reason for this success, of course, was that everyone knew that János Balázs had not revived György Cziffra's memory and legacy for his own advancement. It was well known that, on the one hand, he had organised the performances for years without self-interest, played the piano in tribute to Cziffra's memory and spoken about the importance of the legendary artist wherever he could. It was equally well known that Balázs, with his wife and colleagues, put a huge amount of work into organising the festivals every year, and they did so from the very first time. Since 2016, the festival has grown year by year, constantly offering new features, and has succeeded in attracting some of the greatest Hungarian and international artists to work towards the same goal. In 2021, Hungary officially celebrated the 100th anniversary of György Cziffra’s birth as a National Memorial Year, and UNESCO, the international organisation, included the centenary among its jointly celebrated commemorations. In 2021/2022, in cooperation with UNESCO, concerts were organised in 36 cities across 15 countries, with more than 100 events and 100 performers in the world's most prestigious concert halls, from Asia to America and Europe.
The Cziffra Festival also has an important mission in supporting talent development. Through masterclasses and substantial monetary prizes, it supports artists at the beginning of their careers.
The instructor
The desire to teach, to pass on knowledge, appeared in János Balázs' life at a very young — perhaps even unusually young age — as he has long been committed to building the audience of the future. Early in his career, he launched a free concert series for children, attended by more than 10,000 people. In front of St Stephen’s Basilica he gives unique open-air piano recitals called ZEnergia. Barely had the ink dried on his diploma when, at the age of 26, he began teaching at the Snétberger Talent Centre, presenting his students in concerts and radio recordings. Since 2019, he has been an associate professor at the Liszt Academy. He believes that the primary goal of music education is to leave a mark on the world — lasting over centuries — by passing on the ideas and values that the artists have learned and find authentic. He received a great deal of help from his own masters at the beginning of his career, which is why he feels it is important that as many young musicians as possible from the generations to come also have similar mentors.
Since 2017, he has been doing this work with dedication in the television talent show Virtuózok (Virtuosi), where he sees his role not "just" as a judge, but he deemed it important to pay attention to talented young people behind the scenes, to give them advice and help them with his own experience, and to advance the future careers of children whom he believes have outstanding skills and promising futures.
Since 2020, he has also been mentoring young musicians at the National Talent Centre, and in this position — one of his most important missions since the founding of the Cziffra Festival — he has supported the lives of especially talented young musicians, regardless of their instrument, so his mentoring is not limited to pianists.
In 2021, as a jury member of the Franz Liszt International Piano Competition, he combined his dedication to his great idol’s legacy with his teaching mission, when the competition also commemorated György Cziffra, who was born 100 years earlier: at the suggestion of János Balázs and with the full agreement of the international jury and the organisers, the competitors also played Cziffra transcriptions in one of the rounds.
He also shares his knowledge at international masterclasses and has been a visiting professor at McGill University in Canada, the Shenyang Conservatory of Music in China, and the Hanoi Conservatory of Music in Vietnam.
The pianist
János Balázs considers himself to be a very romantic person. In all areas of life, including piano playing, he is guided by his emotions, and thus allows himself to be less than perfect in his performance at times. “I don't believe," he says, "that perfection should take precedence over emotional content.” This is very clear in his playing: his virtuoso performance style and exceptional piano technique are combined with deep musicality, giving him a special ability to connect with his audience.
In the 2013/2014 concert season, János Balázs won the Rising Star "Artist of the Year" award from among candidates representing 19 countries. This distinction enabled him to perform in Europe's most prestigious concert halls, under the auspices of ECHO (European Concert Hall Organisation). He has performed at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Cité de la Musique in Paris, the Palau de la Música in Barcelona, the Barbican Centre in London, and the Konzerthaus in Vienna. In recent years, he has taken Hungarian music from Moscow to Brussels, Toronto and Bogota. As an orchestral soloist, he has played with the Brussels Philharmonic, the Dortmund Philharmonic, the Aspen Philharmonic, the French Radio Philharmonic, the Hungarian National Philharmonic, the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra, the Danubia Orchestra Óbuda, the Moscow Women’s Symphony Orchestra, the Dohnányi Orchestra Budafok, and the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. During his career he has given concerts in many important concert halls. He is a regular guest at the Liszt Academy and Müpa Budapest but has also been applauded at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Victoria Hall in Geneva, La Scala in Milan, the Barbican Centre in London and the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow. Yet his favourite concert venue remains the "Cziffra Chapel" in Senlis.
He has collaborated with such renowned artists and conductors as Mischa Maisky, Tamás Vásáry, José Cura, Vadim Repin, István Várdai, Charles-Olivieri Munroe, Pinchas Steinberg, Stéphane Denéve, Jukka Iisakkila, Ksenia Zharko, Roger Bausier, David Mathues, and Gwendolyn Masin.
The highlight of the Cziffra Memorial Year, and the most challenging task for János Balázs, was the performance of Cziffra Psodia, a piano concerto by the world-famous composer Péter Eötvös, with Miklós Lukács on cimbalom solo, accompanied by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and conducted by Mikko Franck. The piece not only evoked the virtuoso performer but also portrayed the dramatic events of György Cziffra's life in music.
János Balázs is the recipient of almost every major professional and state honour in Hungary, including the Kossuth Prize, which he received in 2019 as the youngest awardee in its history. Previously, he was awarded the Liszt Ferenc Prize in 2015 and the Hungarian Artist of Merit title in 2018.
Among his international accolades, the young pianist was awarded the Polish State Prize in 2011 for his performance of Frederic Chopin's complete works, and in 2019 he was awarded the title of Young Steinway Artist. He has been a member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts since 2016 and a corresponding member since 2021.
He has also released six solo albums in his career. He has recorded the piano concertos and all the piano works of László Dubrovay, and the most important pieces for him are presented on the albums "The Soul of the Piano" and "3 Faces of the Piano". In collaboration with famous Hungarian violinist Félix Lajkó, he shares the art of improvisation, central to his identity both as performer and instructor, on their album entitled ”Jelszó – Password".
With the release of "ImprovisArt" in 2021, Balázs returned to the world of competitions. The final of the Music International Grand Prix was held in New York. In the multi-round competition first albums were chosen by the jury, but in the final round the artists performed live in front of the jury at the Kaufman Music Center. János Balázs's album not only came first in the final, but his live performance as a distinguished artist won first place in the piano category and the Audience Award, making him the first Hungarian winner in the history of the competition.
Summary
According to János Balázs's creed, musicianship — musical talent — is a gift from God. Our existence on Earth must have a purpose, although this purpose lies very far away, almost beyond reach. But if a person wakes up every day, spends the day with music taking shape within, longing to be expressed, he cannot escape the joy that comes when he succeeds in realising his thoughts and transmitting them to the public. Music may be a game for a child, but for an adult it demands immense work. But if you are a true artist, then despite all the difficulties and compulsory tasks, looking into your heart will reveal your will to continue.
At the same time, hard work also shapes the person, and keeps the artist on the ground, even when they are applauded and celebrated by the audience on stage, because this is when one feels that even the most brilliant musician must work to improve their skills and performance. Acquiring the technical mastery to overcome every challenge is a daily obligation, since it is the prerequisite for a work’s performance to reach the point where the artist can focus only on the music and its expression.
The artist who is afraid of practice, or finds it hard to live with, may not yet have reached the stage where art is worth the work that sometimes demands an almost ascetic self-discipline.
[2022]