Cellist and teacher Csaba Onczay has become one of the iconic figures of more than half a century of Hungarian musical life. From the late 1960s – his years as a student at the Academy of Music – he has been constantly present in Hungary’s cultural scene, inspiring in music lovers a sense of continuity and steadfastness. Meanwhile, frequent reports of his international successes continually confirmed and reinforced his students’ personal impressions and the general recognition of his art. His presence was never confined to the capital: throughout the country he performed, taught, held masterclasses, organized events, and served on juries. Even when he spent longer or shorter periods abroad, his name never disappeared from the press, and his playing remained a constant feature of Hungarian musical life through radio broadcasts and an ever-growing number of commercial recordings. His personality is as direct and approachable as his artistic credo is simple and clear: “For me it has always been essential to present Hungarian music – the works of Hungarian composers – both at home and abroad as widely, as authentically, and with as much devotion and empathy as possible.”
Studies
Csaba Onczay was born in Budapest on 29 December 1946. Six months later his family moved to Szeged, where he spent his entire childhood and began his studies – and to this day he considers himself a Szeged native. He attended the practice elementary school of the University of Szeged and later the István Tömörkény Secondary School, while simultaneously studying cello under Sándor Báthory at the Municipal Music School and the Szeged State Secondary School of Music. Both his parents were musically gifted and trained singers. Their home retained the tradition of domestic music-making and collective listening, and the family often attended opera performances conducted by Viktor Vaszy. The young Csaba was especially captivated by the operatic experience, which drew him toward a musical career. He sang in the opera’s children’s chorus and initially aspired to become a singer – but in the end, he devoted himself to the instrument whose sound, in his view, comes closest to the human voice.
From 1965 to 1970, he studied at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest under Antal Friss. In 1970, he attended the summer school Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, where he studied with André Navarra, and the following academic year at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, where his master was Sergey Petrovich Shirinsky.
The Early Years
The start of his performing career was marked by two important competition victories: first prize at the International Pablo Casals Cello Competition in Budapest in 1973, and at the International Villa-Lobos Cello Competition in Rio de Janeiro in 1976. Both brought him worldwide recognition and numerous concert invitations. He had already participated successfully in several competitions during his Szeged and Academy years – for instance, he won first prize at the National Cultural Festival in 1961 and at the Academy’s internal competition in 1967 (both in solo and chamber categories).
He drew widespread attention in September 1968 when, as one of the youngest participants, he reached the finals of the 10th Budapest International Music Competition (Casals Cello Competition), earning a special mention from the jury. Writing in Magyar Zene (Hungarian Music), András Pernye described his performance: “This twenty-two-year-old Hungarian artist, a fourth-year student at the Academy of Music, is among the most talented and engaging musicians of the entire competition. In ability he can match anyone… He is musical through and through, and every solution of his lies within the line of the music itself – he plays each piece as if it were his own.” Pernye noted that the young artist’s preparation could not yet be flawless, but he was clearly on the right path toward artistic perfection.
Onczay was not a prodigy reaching his peak at eight or ten years old, followed by decline or burnout before maturity. His artistic and personal development was harmonious – gradual, steady, and rooted in decades of hard work rather than inborn miracle. In a 1972 December radio review, László Somfai already noted the remarkable progress that would soon lead to Onczay’s international triumph at the 1973 Casals Competition: “Onczay represents a distinctly new colour among the leading Hungarian cellists and is a fascinatingly sympathetic musician in every way. What captivates me is his passionate drive to explore the meaning of every musical phrase, every single note, to uncover their interrelations within the whole, and then to fill them with life. If it weren’t a cliché, we could say that he radiates musicality – the love of music and of making music, the sheer joy of musical creation. Perhaps only those play like this who, possessing sufficient virtuosity and technical schooling, can throw themselves fearlessly into bringing scores to life, while still young enough to be unaware of routine – unaware of their own limits or the maximum of their talent, which inevitably leads to compromise later.”
By the late 1970s, Csaba Onczay had achieved the artistic maturity beyond which playing no longer “improves” but deepens, and where the ever-learning performer grows not so much in quantity as in wisdom. The change can be followed in hundreds of Hungarian reviews: from the 1980s onwards, critics increasingly refrained from describing his playing in detail. The audience already knew it – reviewers either echoed earlier appraisals or merely recorded the fact and programme of the performance. Among the relatively late, exemplary analyses, let us quote Tibor Tallián’s radio commentary from October 1974:
“Onczay is an exceptionally fortunate, balanced artistic personality. His cello playing is profoundly musical at the highest level, and he never overloads his sound or expression with overly poetic or emotional images. He remains entirely within the framework of rhythm, melodic shaping, and purely musical means – and thus his art is complete. His sense for musical syntax, the balancing of phrases, the shaping of long arches, the cohesion of subordinate clauses, is truly outstanding. His rhythmic power – rare among string players – serves the vigorous shaping of melody just as much as the firm, unsentimental, and unexaggerated tone, whose occasional greyness is clearly a matter of the instrument. Onczay is full of élan and fire, yet never undisciplined, and always somewhat aristocratic. He is not devoid of emotion, but never puts his own feelings first, because he knows that emotion – like so much else – is already composed into the music.”
The keen-eared critic noticed that the minor issues of sound did not stem from the performer but from the instrument’s imperfections. Until the age of thirty, Onczay did not have a world-class cello worthy of the greatest artists. In 1976 the Hungarian state purchased and loaned him a cello made in 1700 by the Venetian master Matteo Goffriller. From then on this became his constant instrument–much as his role model Pablo Casals played one of Goffriller’s masterpieces for a full sixty years.
Solo appearances
Although chamber music has always been of prime importance to Csaba Onczay, he is known worldwide foremost as a soloist who excels both in dazzling virtuosity and in singing-like, deeply inward music-making. In his art he aims to create the harmony and ideal balance of these two. Because of the cello repertoire and the nature of the instrument, programs typically count not only accompanied or unaccompanied pieces and concertos as solo numbers, but also the two-player sonatas that form the backbone of Onczay’s repertoire. This is why concert bills often speak of “a recital by Csaba Onczay” or even “solo evening,” even when the pianist and the cellist are given musically equal roles and the artists perform with that understanding. The audience, however, loves to celebrate the cellist as soloist – whose sound, stronger than that of the violin or most woodwinds, acoustically dominates the event. Over a career spanning half a century, Onczay has appeared regularly in the concert halls of Europe, the Americas, and the Far East – and even on reaching a biblical age his activity has remained robust, with only the emphasis among his pursuits shifting.
Looking at Onczay’s early appearances, what strikes one first is their sheer number and variety; through them the artist’s characteristic profile clearly emerges. From the late 1960s local concerts and the most diverse journeys followed one another (already in his Academy years he toured Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, Germany, Belgium, and Italy within a single year), with a highly variegated repertoire. He belongs to that type of artist who seems to learn quickly and easily, is energized – not unsettled – by the audience’s attention, and gladly takes on any task, whether a last-minute chamber-orchestra appearance, a sonata program, or a full recital. Rather than choosing a new work after long deliberation and nervously fixating on the concert date, he accepted the steady stream of invitations with curiosity and fearlessness, as naturally as one might gather flowers in a meadow. At first, alongside a few Baroque movements, he often played Kodály’s Szonáta szólócsellóra (Sonata for Solo Cello) and Szonáta csellóra és zongorára (Sonata for Cello and Piano), Debussy’s Cello Sonata, the Cello Concerto by Dvořák, by Shostakovich and by Saint-Saëns, Brahms’s Double Concerto, Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, Beethoven’s Cello Sonata in C major and Brahms’s Cello Sonata in E minor, as well as András Mihály’s Mouvement. Over the ensuing decades he performed essentially all the works found on the repertoires of globe-trotting cellists.
He frequently appears with orchestra: besides the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra, the MÁV Symphony Orchestra, the Radio Symphony, and the Győr and Miskolc Symphonies, he has enjoyed success with the Vienna and Berlin Symphonics, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Italian RAI Orchestra, and several leading American ensembles. The roughly fifty concertos he has performed have been conducted by many excellent maestros; in his youth, collaborations with János Ferencsik and Kobayashi Ken-Ichiro were especially formative. With the latter he performed a total of twelve concertos over the decades; with Ferencsik and the National Philharmonic Orchestra he once played Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto in Moscow in the composer’s presence. He has also appeared under, among others, Charles A. Ansbacher, André Bernard, Aurelio Canonici, Béla Drahos, György Fejér, Ádám Fischer, Tamás Gál, Zsolt Hamar, Robert Houlihan, Antal Jancsovics, Balázs Kocsár, Zoltán Kocsis, Imre Kollár, György Lehel, András Ligeti, Ervin Lukács, Guido Mancusi, Manfred Mayrhofer, Géza Oberfrank, István Pécsi, Martin Turnovsky, Tamás Vásáry, and Howard Williams. János Petró deserves special mention – together they appeared in more than forty concerts, most often with the Szombathely Symphony Orchestra.
He has always been interested in leading an orchestra and on occasion tried his hand at conducting. As soloist he performed with the Südwestdeutsches Kammerorchester in Pforzheim and later conducted them in Germany and Italy; he conducted the orchestra of Rome’s Gonfalone concert hall and toured with the Szombathely Symphonics’ chamber ensemble. In 1986, in Florence, he helped found the Camerata Strumentale Italiana, serving for two years as its conductor and artistic director. In Hungary he made his conducting debut in 1995 with the MÁV Symphony Orchestra. Since conducting, too, demands one’s entire being, he remained true to his primary vocation and regarded the podium mainly as an instructive musical excursion.
His Hungarian engagements became truly regular and organized when, in 1971, he became a soloist of the concert organising agency National Philharmonia; within a few years he had toured almost the entire country in the company of excellent orchestras, conductors, and chamber partners. In June 1973 he appeared with such success at the Interforum international series organized by Hungarian Television that, after the Esterháza broadcasts from Fertőd, he received on-the-spot contracts to tour England, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and the Soviet Union. His Italian tours began in 1972; over the decades roughly twenty more followed. Alongside regular appearances in Germany and Austria, and trips to Canada, Cuba, Portugal, Spain, Yugoslavia, Poland, and the Soviet Union, his U.S. tours assumed special importance: he debuted there in 1984 at the Wolf Trap festival near Washington, and over the next two decades the Philadelphia-based Joanne Rile Artists Management alone organized 118 American concerts for him. He reached the Far East somewhat later: his first Japan tour was organized by the Naxos label in 1993, and he has appeared regularly there ever since, giving concerts in some thirty cities (Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Kyoto, Gifu, etc.), often returning to the same venues; in Gifu he has given an annual solo recital for a quarter of a century. Elsewhere in the region he has performed in Hong Kong, Shenzhen (China), and Seoul.
Csaba Onczay has consistently sought to acquaint audiences with the newest works. He has given world or Hungarian premieres of several contemporary pieces (by Akutagawa, Dutilleux, Gubaidulina, Landowski, Lutosławski, and Penderecki). Among Hungarian composers, Levente Gyöngyösi, Miklós Kocsár, Kamilló Lendvay, and Sándor Szokolay have written works for him.
Chamber music at the center of the repertoire
As already noted, cello–piano sonatas occupy a borderline position from the audience’s point of view between solo works and the chamber pieces that hold such a central place for Csaba Onczay – yet these sonatas represent the most valuable part of the cello literature. They often appear in the programs of solo recitals, but in the narrower sense of chamber concerts they are performed either alongside other sonatas or together with trios and quartets, more rarely quintets and sextets. Among Onczay’s formative musical experiences from his secondary-school years in Szeged were performances of the piano quintets by Dohnányi, Schumann, and Saint-Saëns – especially the first opus of the Hungarian master, whose inclusion on the program at the time carried political overtones. With his schoolmates László Baranyai and György Kiss he formed a piano trio, continuing their joint music-making at the Academy of Music under Endre Petri’s direction (in November 1967 they won the school’s competition with Beethoven’s D major Trio, the so-called Ghost Trio, and two years later reached the semifinals of the Bavarian Radio International Competition in Munich). In Szeged Onczay also played flute chamber music with István Matuz, with whom he not only won a school gold medal but also took part in István Nagy’s memorable Collegium Artium performances.
From the late 1960s for about a decade, pianist Csilla Varga was Onczay’s regular sonata partner; he also appeared with Lóránt Szűcs, Zoltán Kocsis, Ferenc Rados, Jenő Jandó, and Márta Gulyás; from 1980 he spent five summers in Boston performing with Katalin Komlós; from the 1990s with Mária Kovalszki and Adrienne Krausz, later with Zsuzsa Homor. In 1987 he formed a trio with Vilmos Szabadi and Márta Gulyás – a collaboration that continued regularly for decades. His Academy contemporary Sándor Falvai is likewise among his constant piano partners; for twenty years Onczay has given annual summer concerts with him in Japan, later joined by András Kiss and then by Vilmos Szabadi as a trio. Further chamber opportunities came from string quintets and sextets: he was often invited to perform with the world-famous Bartók String Quartet when they presented Schubert’s Quintet or Brahms’s Sextet on their programs.
From the late 1990s he appeared frequently with harpist Andrea Vígh, and the unusual, rare combination of cello and harp proved successful over the long term. In 2003, together with two fellow professors from the Academy – violinist Béla Bánfalvi and violist László Bársony – and with their newly graduated sons, they founded the Budapest Sextet, with which they recorded an album (works by Dohnányi and Mosonyi) and performed in Hungary, Japan, and Germany. With his son Zoltán, also a cellist, he formed a two-person ensemble under the name DuOncelly; after their Hungarian debut, they performed in the United States, Argentina, Japan, Germany, and Italy.
The role of teaching in the life’s work – institutions, masterclasses, festivals
Teaching – whether as a continuous appointment at an institution or through shorter masterclasses – has accompanied Csaba Onczay throughout his life and is inseparably intertwined with his performing career. He not only shared his stage experience with his students but also used teaching to continually examine, refine, and deepen his own knowledge, while at the same time expanding his repertoire. His relationships with students, colleagues, and course organizers – thanks to his exceptional communication skills – have led to numerous artistic collaborations and concert invitations.
In 1971, barely a year after graduating from the Academy of Music, he was invited to take an assistant professorship there under Professor Ede Banda. Two years later he received his own class, and since then he has trained generations of cellists (from 1994 as a university professor, from 2003 as habilitated professor, and from 2017 as professor emeritus). He also served as visiting professor at the Freiburg Hochschule für Musik (1995–1996), at the Oberlin College and Conservatory in the United States (autumn 2001), and between 2006 and 2009 at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington. There he formed a collegial and friendly relationship with the world-famous János Starker, whom he has since counted among his masters.
Since 1978, Csaba Onczay has regularly held masterclasses around the world – sometimes lasting only a few days, other times several months – four or five times a year. From 1981 for two decades, he directed the courses of the Niederstotzinger Musiktage in Germany, and from 1982 to 1997 he taught at the summer festivals in Bergamo. Between 1983 and 1987 he was a regular guest of the Kodály Center of America in Boston, and from 1987 to 2005 he taught at the summer courses held in the Festetics Palace in Keszthely.
The Liszt Academies in Gifu, launched in 1995, also provided an opportunity for him and his Hungarian colleagues to select in advance, on site in Japan, those prospective students who would later apply to the Liszt Academy in Budapest. His visiting professorship in Bloomington from 2005 was complemented by participation in the summer string academies there – a tradition he continued without interruption for fifteen years.
Beyond these, Onczay gave masterclasses at the University of Hartford (USA, 1985), in Sion, Switzerland (Académie de Musique, 1989–1997), from 1993 at the Semmering Summer Academy in Austria, at the San Francisco Conservatory (1997), in Stuttgart (1998), in Rheineck, Switzerland (1999–2012), five times in Hong Kong from 2004, and in Seoul in 2014 and 2016.
The teaching profession has a natural extension in his long-standing activity as a jury member at numerous national and international competitions. Already as a young teacher, András Mihály invited him in 1972 to serve on the jury of the chamber music meeting in Kaposvár – the first of many such appointments at home and abroad (Szolnok, Kraków, Budapest). After winning the International Villa-Lobos Competition in Rio de Janeiro in 1976, Onczay returned there as a juror at the next edition. Among the Budapest International Competitions, following his 1973 victory, he served on the jury of the Casals Competition in 1985 and the Popper Competition in 2004, and in 2014 he was co-chair alongside Casals’s widow. In 2000, he founded the International Youth Cello Competition in Várpalota, where he has remained the permanent jury president ever since.
Domestic and international recognition
Csaba Onczay’s outstanding artistic and pedagogical achievements have been acknowledged by numerous honours and awards. In 1976 he received the Liszt Prize for his exceptional interpretation of Kodály’s Solo Sonata, in 1986 the title Artist of Merit for his performing career, and in 1993 the Kossuth Prize in recognition of his national and international success. In 2004 he was awarded the Bartók–Pásztory Prize, and in 2008 the Pro Artibus Artisjus Medal for his contribution to the promotion of contemporary Hungarian music abroad. He has also received the Artisjus Performer’s Award several times. Onczay is a founding and honorary member of the Hungarian Kodály Society, and a founding member of the Hungarian Music Society. In 2016 he was made an Honorary Citizen of Várpalota and received the Gold Plaque of the City of Szeged. In 2019, on the recommendation of the Government of Japan, he was decorated by the Emperor with the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon. Since 2019 he has been a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts.
[2020]