Family and Studies
Dezső Ránki was born on 8 September 1951 in Budapest. Neither his parents nor his grandparents were professional musicians, but all of them loved music – among his relatives there were amateur violinists and record collectors as well. Growing up in this music-loving environment, Ránki encountered music from an early age, but he only began studying the piano at the age of eight. His entry into music school was thanks to Magda Szmrecsányi, the solfège and piano teacher who also played a decisive role in shaping Zoltán Kocsis’s career. Szmrecsányi visited the first grades of the Kertész Street primary school, and those pupils in whom she saw musical interest and talent she invited to join a preparatory solfège class. At the end of the first year, the students could choose an instrument. Although the violin was recommended for Ránki, renting a piano seemed more practical for the family, and so they chose Liszt’s instrument. The 7th District Music School was directed by Klára Máthé, a teacher of methodology at the Academy of Music, and many of her fourth- and fifth-year students, well-known teachers in later years, began their teaching careers there. It was thus that the young Ránki became a student of Kinga Domokos, who was still a student at the Academy. During his five years of basic training, Ránki learned nearly five hundred works, averaging 100–120 piano pieces per year. Thanks to his rapid development, at the age of twelve he was admitted to the Béla Bartók Secondary School of Music (known before 1966 as the State Conservatory), where he studied for five years under Klára Máthé. During this period, having mastered hundreds of pieces from anthologies and piano method books, Ránki became a fully formed young musician.
Ránki later summarized Máthé’s teaching method as follows: “Klári néni was an exceptionally accomplished musician with a vast knowledge. The greatest value of her teaching lay in her extraordinary talent for sensing what should or could be said at a particular moment to help a student move forward. Sometimes she scolded us, and one felt utterly crushed – yet even her apparently simple or cryptic remarks could instantly set things right, both musically and physically. She always knew exactly how deeply and in what way to intervene.”
After five years at the Bartók Béla Secondary School of Music, in 1969, Ránki was admitted – by special permission, while still in his third year of high school – to the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music, entering directly into the second year. The academic year 1969/1970 proved to be a watershed in his career. He completed his final year of secondary school as a private student and took his graduation exams, while simultaneously completing both the first and second years at the Academy.
At the same time, on Máthé’s recommendation, he took part in the three-round International Schumann Competition held in Zwickau in the autumn of 1969, where participants were required to perform a forty-minute and then a one-hour solo program in the first two rounds, and Schumann’s A minor Piano Concerto in the final. Although Ránki entered the competition without prior concert experience or having ever played with an orchestra, he achieved the highest score in every round. In addition to winning first prize, his remarkable success attracted international press attention. As Heinrich Spieler wrote, “Perhaps there is nothing perfect in this world, but while this young Hungarian virtuoso is playing, we must think that in the realm of music there just might be.” Another review in Der Morgen stated, “Of course, the first thing to note is the flawless technique, which allows this Hungarian artist to render every figure and every melodic phrase with minute subtlety; in Ránki’s performance, charm, dramatic impulse, and naturalness direct the listener’s attention away from technique and toward expressive perfection.”
With this triumph in Zwickau, the career of the eighteen-year-old Dezső Ránki had begun, both in Hungary and internationally. At the same time, the start of his career coincided with the beginning of his studies at the Academy. He entered the class of Pál Kadosa during a legendary period when, alongside him, Jenő Jandó, Zoltán Kocsis, and András Schiff were also attending Kadosa’s lessons. A former pupil of Kodály, Kadosa taught in the spirit of his master, and Bartók had already written of him in 1939 that he was an “excellent pianist and pedagogue.” The generation of Hungarian pianists of the 1970s regarded him as their spiritual father. In Ránki’s words: “[Pál Kadosa] taught primarily through his presence. He pointed out many important things, and sometimes from seemingly insignificant remarks we could infer the essential. He often said in interviews that his method was that he had no method. His entire being radiated such knowledge, such reverence for music and culture, that we became richer simply by being in his mere presence.”
By that time, Kadosa was nearly seventy, and unlike in earlier years when he had played extensively during lessons, he now instructed Ránki’s generation almost exclusively through words. The other major formative influence was Ferenc Rados, Kadosa’s assistant at the time, from whom, in Ránki’s own words, “I learned the hardest thing: how to listen to my own playing from the outside and how to work independently.” Besides them, he studied music history with György Kroó and András Pernye, solfège with Melinda Kistétényi, and chamber music with András Mihály.
The Beginnings of his Career (1969–1982)
The years spent at the Academy of Music marked the beginning of what was already becoming a rapidly rising national and international career. Following his success in Zwickau in the autumn of 1969, Ránki performed forty-four concerts in 1970 alone. His first orchestral concert in Hungary took place in February 1970 at the Academy of Music (Mozart: Piano Concerto in G major, K. 453), followed in May by his first international appearance in Rome (Schumann: Piano Concerto in A minor). That same year, on 10 December, he gave his first solo recital in the Grand Hall of the Academy – a milestone for any artist, despite his having already played close to fifty concerts by then. The hall was packed to capacity, the recital was broadcast live on the radio, and András Pernye reviewed it in Magyar Nemzet, writing:
“First and foremost: [Ránki] is an unusually and admirably perfect pianist. He possesses and conveys the musical material with extraordinary assurance. His entire presence is immensely sympathetic, his relationship to music simple, sincere and unpretentious. He is humble and restrained toward the works, partly because he wisely and conceptually perceives their greatness, and partly because he has an inward-turning temperament.”
This review of the concert, which featured works by Haydn, Schumann, and Liszt, summed up the opinions that would continue to appear both in Hungary and abroad about Ránki’s playing in the years that followed.
If we wish to summarize the period leading up to 1973, the completion of his studies at the Academy, the sheer numbers speak for themselves: 191 performances in four years – 90 in Hungary (47%) and 101 abroad (53%). The reception everywhere was uniformly enthusiastic. Critics repeatedly used the same words of praise, not out of bias or because of Ránki’s sympathetic appearance – although this was frequently noted – but because of his increasingly mature and convincing interpretations, which grew in depth and perfection year by year.
In 1973, at the age of only twenty-one, Ránki received his piano diploma – two years ahead of his contemporaries. By then he had already given seventy-two solo recitals, performed in twelve different European countries, and in January that same year played Liszt’s Piano Concerto in A major with the Berlin Philharmonic under Hiroyuki Iwaki – one of the world’s most renowned orchestras. Around the same time, he also appeared multiple times at the Concertgebouw, performed with the Gewandhaus Orchestra under Kurt Masur, and regularly collaborated with the State Concert Orchestra of Hungary. These achievements made his early career truly exceptional. His rapid ascent was also recognized at the highest artistic and governmental levels: together with his diploma, he was awarded the Liszt Prize.
In the years that followed, Ránki’s performing and teaching careers developed side by side. After graduating, he began his teaching career at the Academy of Music as Pál Kadosa’s assistant. However, the increasing difficulty of balancing teaching and concertizing led him to give up teaching after about a decade. Since then, he has declined both domestic and international teaching or guest-professorship positions. He also tends to avoid giving masterclasses, explaining that he sees the teacher–student relationship as akin to that between a doctor and a patient – something that, by nature, should not take place in public.
Between 1973 and 1982, if one considers only measurable achievements expressed in numbers, these were Ránki’s peak years. During this decade, he performed an average of 95 concerts per year, 62% of them abroad. The year 1976 stands as a record, with 107 performances. Of these, 53% were solo recitals, 32% orchestral concerts, 7% chamber music, and 8% other appearances such as television or radio broadcasts. He became a regular guest in Europe’s leading concert halls, appearing multiple times with the Berlin Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta and with the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Kirill Kondrashin.
At the same time, the impressive but dry statistics and figures never came at the expense of quality. His orchestral, chamber, and solo performances were all met with unanimous critical acclaim, as evidenced by János Breuer’s 1976 review in Muzsika:
“Who would willingly sit on a cramped extra stool, barely comfortable, up in the gallery? For the first time in my life, such an inconvenient perch brought me joy last November, at Dezső Ránki’s solo recital in Paris, in the venerable Salle Gaveau. The hall, somewhat larger than the Academy of Music’s Grand Hall, was packed to the rafters, though that same November 13 there were other, more glittering concerts in Paris. Yet I could not find a better seat, for Ránki’s name carries as much weight in the French capital as it does at home. His program included Mozart, Schumann, Chopin, and Debussy – all composers played quite differently in French than in Hungarian style. Still, the concert had such a special atmosphere as only the most distinguished foreign artists create at us in Budapest. The audience lived and breathed together with the performance. Ránki’s natural musicality and radiant poetry gripped and swept away the listeners from the first notes. Joyful, smiling faces in the audience; the occasional knowing nod here and there as reward for an especially beautiful solution. The applause erupted even before the final chord had fully died away – after every piece.”
For his national and international achievements, Ránki received another high distinction in 1978: at only twenty-six years of age, he was awarded the Kossuth Prize.
1982–1993
In the following decade (1982–1993), the number of concerts decreased somewhat, averaging around sixty-eight per year, though he continued performing in the world’s most prestigious concert halls. To recharge himself, in 1982 he undertook only two international trips and gave significantly fewer performances. During these years – to name just a few examples – he played with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, regularly with the Hungarian State Concert Orchestra, most often under János Ferencsik, György Lehel, Ádám Fischer, and Iván Fischer; with the Camerata Bern, the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Georg Solti, the Camerata Salzburg under Sándor Végh, and the Budapest Festival Orchestra with Iván Fischer.
Discussing this period, three personal milestones must be mentioned, all of which had a decisive influence on his artistic life. In 1979, he married pianist Edit Klukon, who had studied under Jenő Jandó, Pál Kadosa, and György Kurtág, earning her diploma at the Academy of Music in 1982. Their first son, Soma – now an architect – was born in 1985, and their second son, Fülöp, who chose his parents’ profession, in 1995.
Chamber music has always been a central part of Ránki’s career. He has performed regularly in a wide variety of chamber settings – with the Bartók, Hagen, Melos, Keller, and Takács string quartets; frequently with Zoltán Kocsis and Miklós Perényi; and also with Dénes Kovács, Gábor Takács-Nagy, Leonidas Kavakos, Heinrich Schiff, and as accompanist to tenor Peter Schreier in numerous song recitals.
Even so, the most significant role in his chamber career has been that of four-hand, two-piano, and, more recently, three-piano performance. He first appeared in concert with Edit Klukon in 1982, and since 1985 they have performed together regularly, about 10–15 times each year. Over the past four decades, they have played a large portion of the repertoire for four hands and two pianos, and in recent years, joined by their sons, they have expanded their performances to include works for three pianos.
Alongside his concert career, recordings and television appearances accompanied Ránki from the very beginning. Most of his records were released by Hungaroton, and between 1976 and 1980 he also recorded for Teldec. In 1975, he made two solo albums – one of Liszt, one of Schubert – for the Japanese label Denon, among the very first recordings ever produced with digital technology. After Jenő Bors’s dismissal as director of Hungaroton in 1990, Ránki recorded only a few albums for Quint and BMC.
His first recordings followed about half a year after his victory at the Zwickau competition. From the release of his first two Schumann LPs in 1970 until the 1990s, he maintained an average pace of two or three new albums a year. The critical reception was unanimously positive. To quote two reviews – Katalin Komlós’s 1978 Muzsika article on a Liszt–Debussy album, and Sándor Kovács’s 1982 Muzsika review of a Bartók record:
“Ránki’s Liszt album reaches its grandest scale in the Sonata in B minor. Even measured by international standards, and compared with the work’s numerous celebrated recordings, it is of outstanding quality – high-level, if not yet quite deserving of the word ‘perfect’. (The Sonata performance I heard at his most recent Budapest concert, however, may well have earned that cautiously applied superlative.) Debussy’s music has always been close to Dezső Ránki’s performing style and pianistic temperament. On his first Debussy album, we hear the complete Images I–II, the charming Children’s Corner suite, and L’Isle joyeuse. The subtlety of Ránki’s touch and the thousand hues of his tone are beautifully captured, painting a lavish picture of Debussy’s shimmering lights, chiming bells, and the heart-warming playfulness and heroism of childhood dreams. The entire interpretation radiates brilliance: Ránki envelops the music in a magical glow through his famously luminous runs and delicate motion. The uniformly high quality of the recording scarcely allows any single piece to stand out.”
“Dezső Ránki seems to have pursued the ideal of noble simplicity, while Zoltán Kocsis – inspired by the Bartók recordings – chose a bolder, more intense, even extreme path of interpretation. Yes, a critic might be tempted to draw such conclusions, if the other side of the record did not immediately refute all theorizing. There, indeed, the two artists offer an extraordinary experience. [...] The piano transcriptions – deeply pianistic in inspiration, conveying the fullness of orchestral texture through the completeness of the piano sound – only create the possibility. To make that possibility real requires artists such as Zoltán Kocsis and Dezső Ránki, who, while partly retaining their individual artistic ideals, can still subordinate themselves to a shared purpose, performing together ‘in stylistically homogeneous fashion’ – in Bartók’s spirit.”
Despite such enthusiastic reviews, Ránki never felt at ease in the recording studio. As he confessed in a 1992 Muzsika interview:
“I longed for a kind of sculptural perfection, against which the finished recording always felt weak and impoverished – and that discouraged me. Since then, I’ve realized that I simply have to accept that at that moment – just as in a concert – this is the state in which the work lives within me, and this is how I can play it. Recording gives me the chance to repeat but unfortunately deprives me of the inspiring force of the moment’s uniqueness.”
1994–2024
The following three decades can be viewed as a continuation of the earlier period, with one notable difference: by the end of this era, the number of Ránki’s concerts had decreased to an average of 30–40 per year. The reason lies in his own attitude: “I don’t like self-promotion or publicity. I’m sure that has its disadvantages, but this is how I feel comfortable.” (Élet és Irodalom, 1998).
Compared to previous decades, the world of concert organization and artist management changed profoundly during this time – increasingly demanding exactly what Ránki avoids. Nevertheless, neither the critical reception, nor the concert venues, nor the prestigious orchestras changed; only the quantity of performances decreased. He continued to appear in Europe’s most renowned concert halls and to collaborate with leading conductors, including Ádám Fischer, Iván Fischer, Daniele Gatti, Martin Haselböck, Paavo Järvi, Kobayashi Ken-Ichiro, Lorin Maazel, Yehudi Menuhin, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, and Pinchas Steinberg. The only near-complete disappearance came in the form of studio recordings – for reasons discussed earlier.
Despite this, Ránki continued to receive regular state and professional recognition. He was awarded the Prima Primissima Prize in 2005 and received the Kossuth Prize for the second time in 2008. In 2014, he was named an Honorary Citizen of Budapest, and in 2020 he was designated as Artist of the Nation.
When summing up the career of a performer, examining the repertoire is an obvious approach. Across nearly 3,100 performances, Ránki’s sixty-year career encompasses some 113 hours of music learned and performed. By his own admission, he never consciously built his repertoire; in most cases, he chose and added works simply because he was drawn to them or became curious about them. From the outset, he explored the music of several composers simultaneously – never wishing to become a “specialist” in one or two. Nevertheless, his preference for the oeuvres of Haydn, Mozart, Schumann, Liszt, Debussy, Ravel, and Bartók is unmistakable.
A distinctive aspect of Ránki’s artistry lies in his approach to programming. Over the years, his recital programs reveal increasingly deliberate structure – a refined sensitivity to period, key, theme, mood, and expressive content. His goal has always been to create an arc from individual works that form a coherent and continuous whole. This applies equally to his solo recitals and his chamber performances, especially those given with family members, though less so to orchestral concerts, where he is most often invited to perform a single concerto. In that sphere, Bartók’s piano concertos – particularly the Third – alongside those of Liszt, Mozart, and Schumann, have come to dominate his repertoire.
Ránki’s career embodies a spirit not far removed from that which Franz Liszt once described: “In our age, neither directors, nor famous singers, nor conductors consider it their duty to offer the public works of true inner worth – and still less to give them the opportunity to learn to understand those works that are not accompanied from the start by thunderous applause.” Through his career, his recordings, his approach to performance, and his repertoire choices, Dezső Ránki offers an alternative path to the one that prevailed even in Liszt’s own time.
[2024]