Childhood and school years
József Bazsinka was born in Budapest, but grew up in Bicske. He was seven years old when he moved with his parents to the village, about 30 km west of Budapest, because his father had been appointed head of the local ambulance station. His family included several amateur and professional musicians on both sides, but his musical motivation was mainly due to his mother, who was greatly influenced by his uncle, the popular opera singer János Sárdy. Following in his footsteps, she aspired to become a singer. She did not eventually pursue a music career, but she passed on her love of music to her children and sang to them a great deal, following the Kodály method. Her daughter Zsuzsanna, who became a professional opera singer, finally fulfilled her youthful dreams. On his father’s side, there were also several musician role models to follow—above all, his cousin István Bazsinka, a trombonist who was a member of the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra for decades. His acquaintance with the tuba was a chance encounter. In the mid-seventies, a musician couple arrived in Bicske, László Sződy, retired trumpeter of the Hungarian State Opera, and his flutist wife, who founded a pioneering wind orchestra in the town. Because of his physical abilities, the twelve-year-old József Bazsinka, a student interested in playing the wind orchestra, immediately had a helicon, a circularly curved member of the tuba family, hung around his neck. After this decisive encounter, he continued his primary instrumental studies for two years with László Sződy, who gave him a solid grounding in brass technique, until he finished primary school. Another lucky turn in his career was that the parents of László Szabó, tuba player and member of the Hungarian State Opera Orchestra, lived next door to him. During his visits home, László Szabó first gave only instructions to the beginner tuba player during practice, and from 1976, he enrolled him as a student at the Music Officer Training Secondary School of Music of the Hungarian People’s Army of the time. This type of school was specifically designed to provide recruits for the armed forces’ brass bands. Two fortunate circumstances contributed to József Bazsinka’s harmonious professional development. Firstly, the fact that the institution’s teaching, practice, and dormitory life were all in the same building meant that the musician cadets’ strict daily schedule gave them unlimited opportunities to practice and play music with other students, in addition to their studies. The other was that some of the general and vocational subjects were taught by teachers from the Bartók Béla Secondary School of Music, the teacher training school of the Liszt Academy, including many great teachers, practising artists, and theoreticians, such as Gyula Csapó, Barnabás Dukay, and László Tihanyi, outstanding contemporary composers, while 90 per cent of the instrumental teachers were orchestral artists of the Hungarian State Opera.
Another László Szabó—the namesake of the one mentioned above—was also an important teacher in the life of József Bazsinka in secondary school. László Szabó Sr., the retired first trumpeter of the Hungarian State Opera, taught chamber music and, for five years, introduced his students to a wide range of repertoire from Renaissance to contemporary music. He was in constant contact with the most important contemporary Hungarian composers of the 1980s. As a result, his students made several so-called “Z” studio recordings for Hungarian Radio at the prestigious Six and Twenty-two Studios, which are still a model for future generations of musicians. Among other things, it is thanks to the pedagogical and artistic dedication of László Szabó Sr. that it became clear to the young József Bazsinka, already in high school, that chamber music is on a par with soloist tasks and has a decisive influence on symphonic orchestral playing. The school’s wind orchestra, led by Antal Farkas, offered students a similarly broad perspective. Together with his colleague, Ernő Keil, Antal Farkas introduced the ensemble to a similarly wide range of music: they performed not only original, traditional military orchestral compositions but also many transcriptions, thereby expanding their repertoire. This also included the first solo performances of József Bazsinka, with solo compositions accompanied by a brass band. Further inspiration came from the live concerts of renowned ensembles and soloists—such as trumpeter Maurice André—who performed in Budapest, where he and his fellow students often tried to attend in person, often in secret and in breach of strict military discipline.
After five years of thorough training, it was not easy to leave the People’s Army, which had invested a great deal of money in training its music officers to the highest possible level. József Bazsinka was the first to do so with the help of his teacher, László Szabó, and with the permission of the Hungarian Army, thanks to a letter from the then deputy rector of the Liszt Academy and the head of the brass department, who requested his release from the Hungarian People’s Army. There was no turning back from there—although he was expected back—because as a second-year university student, he was accepted into the Hungarian State Opera Orchestra, where he was a solo tuba player for more than a decade until 1993.
During his studies at the Academy, other influential artist-teachers helped his career to develop. His main subject teacher, Dr. László Ujfalusi, was a former tuba player of the Hungarian State Opera, from whom he learned above all the quality of the instrument’s tone and its consistent, solid matrix. He was also influenced by Ferenc Steiner, to whom he owes his guidance in the technical realisation of this sound quality to this day, and who later became his colleague in the Orchestra of the Hungarian State Opera. From trumpeter Zoltán Szűts, also a former member of the Hungarian State Orchestra, he learnt the meticulous attention to detail of chamber music making and the concise aesthetics of expression.
Start of career and competition victories
József Bazsinka’s first international success came shortly after he started his secondary education. In 1978, his wind sextet from the Secondary School of Music won the Concertino Praha, an international youth music competition in which the jury decided the order of places based on the radio recordings submitted. Subsequently, the ensemble’s performance was recognised by several national awards outside the competition.
In 1982, he won first prize at the 1st International Brass Music Camp in Barcs, a border town in Southern Hungary, with the Anonymus Brass Quintet, a group of college students. The International Brass Music Camp in Barcs was initiated by Vendel Bauer, the local music school director, and has been very successful for more than a decade. During this decade, it has gained such international recognition that it has hosted the most renowned foreign brass ensembles and soloists of the genre during the summer, who, in addition to concerts, have given master classes and served as judges in competitions. Philipp Jones, French trumpeter Guy Touvron, Dietrich Unkrott of the Komische Oper in Berlin, and Timofei Dokschitzer of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow were among the other musicians who took part in the camp. A highly prestigious international brass camp in Barcs; its activities were unfortunately brought to an end by the war in Croatia in 1993.
In the same year, József Bazsinka also won first prize abroad as a member of the Anonymus Brass Quintet at the International Wind Competition in Ancona, Italy, where he and his ensemble won first prize in the brass and absolute categories.
In 1986, also with the Anonymus Brass Quintet, he won first prize at the Maurice André Competition in Narbonne, France, where his prizes included a joint performance with the world-famous French trumpeter.
In 1984, he was awarded second prize in the solo category at the International Music Competition in Markneukirchen, Saxony, near the Czech border, which is famous for its music and instrument-making industry, and in 1992, after the unification of the two Germanies, he won third prize in the same competition. Three years later, in 1995, he again achieved a major international success outside Europe, winning second prize at the Tuba Mania International Tuba Competition in Sydney.
Orchestral artist
József Bazsinka became an orchestral artist at the Hungarian State Opera at a very young age, as a second-year college student, and had the opportunity to play alongside some of his former teachers. He was already in his third year of instrumental studies, having been admitted to the second year of his major subject. However, orchestral and chamber music, as well as the increasing number of solo engagements, were difficult to fit into the college timetable, and he was soon allowed to continue his higher studies on an individual basis. As an orchestral musician, he had the opportunity to work with the leading international and Hungarian musicians of the 1980s. Among others, he worked with conductors Lamberto Gardelli, Giuseppe Patane, Rico Saccani, András Kórody, András Mihály, Ervin Lukács, Miklós Erdélyi, Ádám Medveczky, and, among singers, Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Róbert Ilosfalvy, József Simándy, György Melis, Sándor Sólyom Nagy, József Gregor, Veronika Kincses, Ilona Tokody, and last but not least, her opera singer sister Zsuzsanna Bazsinka. His experience with the Opera House Orchestra later proved useful in a concert orchestra of international standing. In the summer of 1992, he signed a contract with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, with which he had already been a regular performer the previous year and has been a permanent member ever since. With the Festival Orchestra, he has appeared in over seventy concerts at home and fifty abroad each season, in the world’s most prestigious concert halls, including Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York, the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in London, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Philharmonie in Berlin, the Musikverein in Vienna, the Scala in Milan and the Suntory Hall in Tokyo. He also performs regularly with the ensemble at many prestigious European music festivals, including Edinburgh, Spoleto, Ravenna, Lucerne, Salzburg, and Bad Kissingen.
It follows from the instrument’s development that its orchestral repertoire is primarily drawn from the 19th and 20th centuries. The orchestral repertoire includes mainly late romantic and modern works, as well as contemporary symphonic works, above all by Piotr Tchaikovsky, Modest Mussorgsky, Antonín Dvořák, Richard Wagner, Anton Bruckner, Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Ernő Dohnányi, Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály, Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich, John Paul Corigliano, Leonard Bernstein, György Ligeti, Péter Eötvös, and György Kurtág.
As a member of the Budapest Festival Orchestra, he has contributed to several award-winning recordings. Two of these have won Gramophone Awards, and one was nominated for the prestigious Grammy Award.
In over three decades with the Festival Orchestra, he has worked with many of the world’s greats. To name just a few: György Solti, György Kurtág, Yehudi Menuhin, Zoltán Kocsis, András Schiff, Jukka Pekka Saraste, Dmitri Kitajenko, Robin Ticciati, Marek Janowski, Pincas Steinberg, Joshua Bell, Emanuel Ax, Alexander Toradze, Kiri Te Kanawa, Leonidas Kavakos, Gidon Kremer, Sergei Krilov, Alsop Pogostkina, József Lendvay, Gábor Takács Nagy—and of course, the ensemble’s founding conductor Iván Fischer. These great musical personalities have had a significant influence on him, honing his musical taste and expressiveness and developing his skills and approach as a soloist, chamber musician, and teacher.
Besides the most renowned orchestras in Hungary, such as the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Hungarian State Opera Orchestra and the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra, he has also performed with renowned foreign orchestras such as the Berlin Radio Orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, the MusicAeterna Symphony Orchestra of Perm and the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra, which has given him the opportunity to work with Kent Nagano, Péter Eötvös, Sylvain Camberling, Friedrich Cerha, and Emilio Pomarico, among others. His most recent invitations have come from the newly formed Utopia Orchestra, whose founder, Teodor Currentzis, has invited some of the finest musicians from 33 countries to join his ensemble.
Soloist career and recordings
József Bazsinka’s career as a soloist also started very early, when he was still a student. At that time, he usually had the opportunity to perform shorter pieces with wind orchestra accompaniment, mostly transcriptions of character pieces composed for other instruments. However, his real solo career took off at the Liszt Academy. In 1982, his acoustics teacher, the composer László Dubrovay, asked him to demonstrate in his class the newly developed techniques for creating special musical effects by the unusual sounding of acoustic instruments. Since then, he has contributed to the presentation and radio recording of many contemporary compositions. Kamilló Lendvay, who was the music lecturer at Hungarian Radio at the time, was himself a composer with a particular interest in jazz and wind music. It was thanks to him that in the first half of the 1980s, Magyar Rádió recorded works for wind instruments by several contemporary composers. József Bazsinka’s performing skills have been an inspiration for many contemporary Hungarian composers. István Bogár orchestrated his Tuba Concerto for wind orchestra and symphony orchestra for his graduation concert. Although not a dedicatee of Frigyes Hidas’s Tuba Concerto, he made a significant contribution to the composition: both the premiere and the first recording are attributed to him. László Dubrovay dedicated several of his works to him, and István Láng composed his Aria di coloratura for him. Barnabás Dukay, Miklós Csemiczky, Attila Reményi, and Pál Rózsa have also written for him.
As a soloist, he has performed regularly in Europe and Asia since the 1980s. He has appeared with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Taiwan National Symphony Orchestra, the Taiwan National Wind Orchestra, the Győr and Szombathely Symphony Orchestras, and the Budapest Symphonic Band, among others. He has recorded on CD the Tuba Concertos of István Bogár, Frigyes Hidas, János Kőműves, and the Symphonic and Wind Orchestra versions of the Trio Concerto and the Double Concerto by László Dubrovay.
He released four solo CDs between 1996 and 2010. His fifth solo album, Letters, is currently being released. In 1996, he released Waves, and in 2001, French Connection, a recording of works for tuba by contemporary French composers, both world premiere recordings, which were a great success on the record market. In 2004, Viola da Tuba, a recording of transcriptions by József Bazsinka of Johann Sebastian Bach’s sonatas for viola da gamba, was released. In 2010, he released a CD of his own entitled Piano Version.
In 1997, he recorded the wind orchestra version of László Dubrovay’s Triple Concerto for Wind Ensemble for Hungarian Radio, and in the 2010s, he recorded the double concerto for two tubas of the author, Concerto for Two Tubas, dedicated to him and his former student Roland Szentpáli. As a soloist for Hungarian Radio, he has regularly recorded contemporary tuba and chamber music. With the Budapest Symphonyc Band, he has released a recording of Frigyes Hidas’ Tuba Concerto entitled Magic Potion. Another album of the ensemble features a wind orchestra version of István Bogár’s Tuba Concerto. János Kőműves has recorded the tuba concerto Une Rhapsodie Basse with string orchestra accompaniment.
He has participated in several tuba symposia in Europe and the United States as a soloist and jury member, including in Chicago, Riva del Garda, Linz, Budapest, and Zsámbék.
As a chamber musician, he and his fellow students founded the Anonymus Brass Quintet in 1982, of which he was a member until 1992. From 1993, he was a member of the Budapest Festival Orchestra Brass Ensemble, and from 1997, he was a member of the Hungarian Brass Quintet. For almost three decades, he has been a professional collaborator with his regular chamber partner, pianist Irina Ivanyickaja.
In 1990, he made his first recording with the Anonymus Brass Quintet (ABQ), on which he collaborated as a chamber musician. In 1995, he recorded László Tihanyi’s The Silence of Wind with the Intermodulation Ensemble, and in 1997, he recorded A la Cart and In Memoriam Bruckner with the Pro Brass Ensemble. In the same year, he released his CD Drachenkampf with the Anonymus Brass Quintet. In 2001, he recorded with the Hungarian Brass Ensemble.
As a guest, he regularly performs with many renowned chamber ensembles in Hungary and Europe, including Klangforum Wien Ensemble, Ensemble Risonanze Erranti, Pro Brass Ensemble, UMZE, Intermodulation Ensemble, and Brummadza Tuba Quartet, as well as the Hungarian Trombone Ensemble. As a recurring guest artist of the Klangforum Wien Ensemble, he has performed at several prestigious international festivals in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.
Professional awards and distinctions
Between 1976 and 1981, while still a student at the Music Officer Training Secondary School of Music of the Hungarian People’s Army, he was awarded for his interpretation of contemporary Hungarian brass chamber music with the Institute’s chamber ensemble.
His artistic work was recognised in 1996 with the Franz Liszt Award. In 2019, he was awarded a habilitation degree at the Faculty of Music and Visual Arts of the University of Pécs for his pedagogical activities. In December 2022, he was awarded the Harmony Prize of the Budapest Festival Orchestra in recognition of his three decades of artistic work with the ensemble.
Disciples and next generations
József Bazsinka also started his pedagogical career very early, as a college student. In 1984, at the age of only 22, he replaced his former teacher, László Szabó, at the Bartók Béla Secondary School of Music, who was on a concert tour abroad with the Hungarian State Orchestra. From then until 1990, he was László Szabó’s assistant at the Bartók Béla Secondary School of Music, which is also the teacher training school of the Liszt Academy. Later, from 1990 until 1992, he taught an independent class there. In 1992, he interrupted his teaching activities at the secondary school because he found it incompatible with his artistic duties as an orchestral artist with the Budapest Festival Orchestra and as a soloist and chamber musician. Prior to that, however, he had regularly attended Mel Culbertson’s master classes in France and Spain, as a student from 1983 to 1986 and then, as an assistant. It was also during this time that he met Roger Bobo personally. From 1989 onwards, he also taught courses independently with Culbertson.
In 2000, he returned to regular vocational school teaching at the Szent István Király Secondary School of Music, where he taught tuba for 8 years. From 2009, he continued his teaching activities at a higher level, initially as a tuba teacher at the Music Institute of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Pécs, where he habilitated in 2019 and was appointed adjunct professor in 2021. In November of the same year, he was appointed Head of the Department of Brass and Percussion.
As a lecturer at the Institute of the Faculty of Music and Visual Arts of the University of Pécs, he has been a consultant for the theses of several tuba students since 2009. He regularly acts as a consultant and opponent for the trombone and trumpet graduate students and participates in the evaluation of theses and portfolios. He has been involved as a subject supervisor for the brass subjects in the jazz introduction submitted by the Institute of Music, and he is also a subject supervisor for the current courses (Bachelor of Performing Arts and Master of Music Teaching). He regularly chairs the institution’s examinations.
As a tuba player, he has regularly given master classes since the mid-1980s in several cities in Spain (Villanove di Castellon, Granada, Barcelona, Gijon, Oviedo), Russia (Moscow, St. Petersburg, Perm), France (Lyon), Great Britain (Manchester), Croatia (Groznian), Portugal (Porto), China (Beijing, Hong Kong), Taiwan (Taipei, Kaoshiung), South Korea (Seoul), the United States (New York, Bard College), Brazil (Sao Paolo), and Argentina (Buenos Aires). He has also given several master classes in Hungary: In Hajdúböszörmény, Tiszafüred, Bicske, Gödöllő, Paks, Szeged, Győr, Pécs, Debrecen, Piliscsaba, Barcs, and Budapest. His former students can be found in the most renowned orchestras in Hungary and abroad. Later generations have found positions in wind bands or as teachers. The field is extremely saturated. A symphony orchestra employs one tuba player, who usually holds the post for 30 to 40 years. However, in masterclasses, he could claim almost all the amateur and professional tuba players currently active in the country as his pupils.
For more than half a decade, he has been the coordinator of the Festival Orchestra’s Talent Incentive Programme.
Of his four children, two of his older sons continue the professional tradition. His eldest son, József Bazsinka Jr., is a Junior Prima Prize-winning tuba player, a regular performer with the Klangforum Wien Ensemble and Ensemble Recherche, and a founding member of In Medias Brass. He completed his doctoral studies in 2018. In addition to his performing and teaching activities, he is a presenter for MTVA Bartók Radio and the television programme Libretto. His second son, Mihály Bazsinka, studied cello and clarinet before studying jazz saxophone at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague with John Rocco and then graduating from the Master’s programme at the Liszt Academy under the guidance of Mihály Borbély and István Elek. In addition to being a freelance performer and founder of the Bazsinka Mihály Quartet, he is also the editor of a religious programme on Duna Television. The two younger children have not been far from the arts: both have chosen folk dance as their life’s work.
Three of József Bazsinka’s six grandchildren have already started their musical studies, for the time being on the piano. The eldest of them, Barnabás, is an exceptionally versatile musical talent who will hopefully be a promising successor to the musical tradition of the Bazsinka family, which now spans four generations.
[2024]