Gergely Bogányi (b. 1974, Vác) comes from a family of musicians. His parents taught at the music school in Vác, and thus the four Bogányi siblings – Bernadett, Gergely, Tibor, and Bence grew up in an environment deeply permeated by music, where chamber playing was almost a daily family activity. Gergely Bogányi’s exceptional musical talent became evident early on: he began piano studies at the age of four at the Vác music school in the class of Katalin Szabó. At six he participated in the National Piano Competition in Nyíregyháza, where he received a special prize, and three years later, in 1983, won first place at the same competition. The following year he was admitted to the preparatory program of the Liszt Academy of Music, where his teachers included Klára Máté, Zsuzsa Esztó, and later László Baranyay. Alongside his studies at the Academy, he continued his education abroad: in the United States he studied under György Sebők at Indiana University in Bloomington, and in Helsinki at the Sibelius Academy with Matti Raekallio. In addition, he took part in masterclasses led by, among others, Ferenc Rados, Murray Perahia, and András Schiff. Beyond his personal relationships with teachers, he also learned a great deal from the playing of past masters: the surviving recordings of Alfred Cortot, Sergei Rachmaninov, and Béla Bartók had a profound influence on him. Distinctions in prestigious competitions were not absent from Bogányi’s career either. In 1992, he won third prize at the International “Maj Lind” Piano Competition in Helsinki, and in 1996 he took first prize at the Franz Liszt International Piano Competition in Budapest. In 1999, at one of Finland’s largest music festivals, the Kuhmo Festival, the trio of Gergely Bogányi, Tibor Bogányi, and Barnabás Kelemen won first place in the chamber music competition for trios.
Gergely Bogányi burst into the musical spotlight as the winner of the 1996 Liszt Competition. Three years later, in 1999, he attracted the profession’s attention with a remarkable undertaking. The young pianist demonstrated extraordinary technical command and stamina when, at a concert in the Grand Hall of the Liszt Academy, he performed Franz Liszt’s Twelve Transcendental Études – works of exceptional difficulty –without pause. He then crowned this already extraordinary achievement with a startling gesture: as an encore he played Frédéric Chopin’s complete Op. 25 set of études. Although at first glance the program might have seemed like a display of endurance for its own sake, reviews of the concert testify that Bogányi’s playing – and indeed his whole presence and stage manner – sought far more than mere virtuosity. The concert as a whole aimed to “conjure up” the spirit of Franz Liszt’s personality. In Bogányi’s figure, a performance attitude long thought extinct from the concert stage was reborn: that of the Romantic virtuoso.
The Romantic character of his playing manifested itself in its poetry and in the powerful emotions that at times broke free of control – yet precisely thereby conveyed authenticity and irresistible emotional force. At the turn of the 20th to the 21st century, as the competitive spirit grew stronger, piano playing and instrumental virtuosity in general underwent a certain mechanization, and artistic achievement became a commodity. Bogányi sought another path. From historic recordings, what most gripped him was their speech- or dialogue-like quality and their intense striving for expression; it is this approach that he communicates in his concerts. Through thorough study of the musical material and deep immersion in its processes, he often casts the work performed in an entirely new light. The act of “conjuring” is a transfigured, even magical gesture which, through its very peculiarity and anachronistic overtones, becomes captivating: it conveys the message of another world, opening up new dimensions and creating the conditions for the emergence of wonder.
Ten years later, in 2009, Bogányi repeated his formidable, almost superhuman achievement: once again, in a single evening, he performed Liszt’s Transcendental Études, this time in the concert hall of Müpa Budapest. According to the reviews, the still only thirty-five-year-old Bogányi had, over the preceding decade, matured fully to meet the technical and intellectual demands posed by Liszt’s works. The excesses of his earlier prodigious efforts had by then given way to artistic maturity.
In 2001, the pianist set himself a special and ambitious goal. Within the framework of a year-long concert tour organized by Kálmán Strém, from 21 February to 5 December 2001, he performed the complete piano works of Chopin. The concert series consisted of twenty-five recitals, comprising 201 compositions by the composer – a total of some 900 minutes of music. As Bogányi himself explained in an interview, the undertaking partly fit the spirit of the age, yet partly diverged from it. [1] On the one hand, there was the obvious desire for summation, for an encyclopedic reckoning; on the other, when planning the programs, the pianist also strove to ensure that each recital would, on its own, offer the audience a memorable whole. Bogányi’s interpretation of Chopin was characterized by the hallmarks of his Romantic style of playing, which had by then become his artistic signature. The intense emotional charge, the dialog-like quality and sensitivity of his melodic shaping, allowed for a varied and faithful rendering of Chopin’s works. Bogányi later undertook the performance of Chopin’s complete piano oeuvre on several further occasions: in Mexico and in the United States he presented the entire cycle of the polish composer within two-week and ten-day tours, respectively. From these milestones it was a direct path to the two-day Chopin Marathon, which became one of the most outstanding international events of the 2010 Chopin Bicentenary. On this occasion, Bogányi performed all of Chopin’s piano works in ten concerts over two days. For some time, the pianist had cherished the idea of an intimate house-concert setting, in which the audience could participate informally in an encounter between Bogányi and Chopin’s art. By playing Chopin’s works, performer and audience alike could gradually attune themselves to the composer’s style, penetrating to the very essence of the pieces. This original concept underwent significant transformation before taking final shape. Instead of an intimate salon, the unconventional concert cycle was realized in the representative concert hall of the Müpa Budapest. Although the cozy atmosphere of a parlor-style musical gathering was lost, in return, an incomparably larger audience was able to share in the rare musical experience. In assembling the programs – just as in the year-long Chopin tour – Bogányi also took into account the criteria of accessibility, of "consumability” in the best sense of the word. Each recital was built on an artistic dramaturgy, thereby creating coherent and meaningful musical units in themselves, and avoiding the potentially monotonous effect that grouping by genre could have brought. In 2012, drawing on the experience of his earlier performances, Bogányi recorded the complete Chopin piano works in a thirteen-volume CD edition.
Although the world of Romanticism is closest to Gergely Bogányi by virtue of his performing temperament, over the course of his career he has also looked beyond the boundaries of the nineteenth century. Among earlier musical eras, the art of Johann Sebastian Bach has been especially decisive for him: the composer’s organ works were among the greatest experiences of his childhood. The lasting intensity of his interest is indicated by his transcriptions of the Baroque master’s works. In October 2004, he opened his solo recital at the Liszt Academy with a Bach piece: the Toccata and Fugue in D minor (BWV 538), performed in Bogányi’s own transcription. The reworking of Baroque organ compositions for the piano is a characteristically Romantic gesture, traceable back to the pupils of Liszt. Yet Bogányi’s transcription suggests a firm and carefully considered conception: it explores the problem of translating organ solutions adequately onto the piano and of conveying the musical message fully through a new medium. Similar questions are addressed in his other Bach transcriptions, such as the Prelude and Fugue in E-flat major (BWV 552) and the Prelude and Fugue in A major (BWV 536). These compositions also featured in the 2012 program A Day with Gergely Bogányi – Liszt and Bach, a three-concert event at Müpa Budapest marking the 201st anniversary of Liszt’s birth.
Piano pieces of the 19th century are the core of Bogányi's repertoire, with all of Chopin's piano works, Liszt's most important works, Franz Schubert's piano sonatas, compositions by Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms, and Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's compositions, which all represent unmistakable facets of Romanticism. Liszt’s own transcriptions likewise figure prominently in his extensive repertoire: among them, for example, the Confutatis and Lacrimosa movements from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem, or Isolde’s Liebestod from Richard Wagner’s opera. Schubert’s Winterreise, in Liszt’s piano transcriptions, has also appeared on Bogányi’s concert programs.
As a pianist, Ludwig van Beethoven’s piano sonatas have likewise played an important role in his career. In April 2012, as part of the concert series The Piano, he performed three of Beethoven’s sonatas. The selected works – the Sonata in C minor (Pathétique), the Sonata in C-sharp minor (Moonlight), and the Sonata in F minor (Appassionata) –although composed in the era of Viennese Classicism, with their tempestuous character already point toward Romanticism. Performances of Béla Bartók’s Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs (Op. 20) and his Sonata testify to his outlook extending into the twentieth century. Bogányi’s repertoire also includes around thirty piano concertos, ranging from Mozart’s piano concertos through Sergei Rachmaninov to Emil Petrovics’s Piano Concerto. He also regularly performs masterpieces of the chamber repertoire, having played with partners such as Kristóf Baráti, Gábor Boldoczki, Barnabás Kelemen, Miklós Perényi, and the Keller Quartet. In an unconventional chamber music formation, he partnered with international chess grandmaster and amateur singer Lajos Portisch to record Schubert songs and Liszt song transcriptions for the special CD release Chess & Piano in 2008.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the piano as an instrument had already met the requirements imposed by the new, large concert halls; yet its development practically came to a halt at that point. In 2015, Bogányi's own custom-designed competition piano, developed in the spirit of Liszt, was born from a further exploration of the instrument's potential. The instrument – dubbed in the press both the “miracle piano” and the “bat piano” – was unveiled on 21 January 2015 in the Grand Hall of the Liszt Academy, and in August of the same year it made a highly successful debut in the Hungarian Pavilion at the Milan Expo. In January 2012, after lengthy experimentation, Bogányi and his colleagues replaced the soundboard of traditional pianos, which is usually made of wood, with a carbon composite material also used in aerospace technology. The sonic results spoke for themselves, making it clear that it was worthwhile to continue developing the instrument in this direction. The design of the piano’s external form and the work on its internal, musical–acoustic aspects progressed in parallel, with the concept undergoing several transformations over the years in line with new observations. The first prototype of the Bogányi piano was completed in 2015. Its futuristic appearance offers an immediately striking sight, while also suggesting a new kind of ambition to convey intellectual content. At the same time, the piano with its renewed exterior is not merely a design model: acoustic considerations also played a decisive role in its creation. The instrument’s leg in fact functions as a soundboard reflector, redirecting the tones that were originally projected downward, in the right direction towards the audience.
Although he is a globetrotting artist, Gergely Bogányi attaches great importance to fostering the artistic and cultural life of his native region and to preserving its achievements and values. He was one of the founders and a regular contributor to the Danube Bend Art Weeks, established in 1998 with the participation of the towns of Vác, Verőce, Kismaros, Nagymaros, Zebegény, and Szob. He was made an honorary citizen of Vác in 1996 and of Zebegény in 2007. His efforts on behalf of the region were recognized with the Pest County Award for Culture in 2003 and the Pro Urbe Budapest Award in 2010.
Beyond these local honors, Bogányi has received numerous state decorations. In 2000 he was awarded the Liszt Prize, and in 2004 the Kossuth Prize. In 2002 the President of the Republic of Finland awarded him the Cross of the Order of the White Rose. In 2008 he received the Junior Prima Award, and in 2011 the Prima Award. At a reception following the concluding concert of the Chopin Marathon in 2010, he was presented with the so-called “Chopin Passport” by the Ambassador of Poland, in recognition of his role as one of the foremost and most dedicated international interpreters of the composer’s works. Since 2013 he has been Honorary Professor at the Liszt Academy of Music, and since 2014 a full member of the Music Section of the Hungarian Academy of Arts.
[2016]
[1] „A tatarozás sohasem ér véget" László J. Győri's interview with Gergely Bogányi, Muzsika, Vol.XLIV/10, October 2001, p.16.