His life
Childhood
Tamás Vásáry was born on 11 August 1933 in Debrecen into a prominent intellectual family. His father, József Vásáry (1890–1975), was a politician and member of Parliament. His grandfather, Dezső Baltazár (1871–1936), Reformed bishop and president of the synod, was one of the most influential Reformed pastors of his era, playing a decisive role not only in the church but in public life as well. The family’s political tradition was further strengthened by his uncle, István Vásáry (1887–1955), who served as mayor of Debrecen and later, in 1944–45, as minister of finance in the provisional government.
Tamás Vásáry possessed an exceptional memory from early childhood. By his own account, he remembers even his christening and the moments after his birth – something he first realised at the age of sixteen, when he became a godfather and asked his mother why he had been baptised in a private home rather than in a church, although he was the grandson of a bishop. His mother was astonished by the details, since Tamás had been only three months old at the time.
The beginnings of his musical career are closely linked to his grandfather. Between the two world wars, Dezső Baltazár travelled to America to raise funds for the Debrecen College. His speeches had such a powerful impact that one of the church elders – who happened to be a piano manufacturer – sent, in addition to the donations, a special instrument as a gift. It was a mechanical piano that played various works automatically with the help of special paper rolls, making the movement of the keys visible. This piano, later inherited by his mother, played a decisive role in shaping Vásáry’s musical interests.
By the age of eight, his later vocation as a conductor had already begun to show. At his first “concert” he conducted Liszt’s Les Préludes – though at that time only while standing in front of a record player on which his sister played the Philadelphia Orchestra’s recording conducted by Jenő Ormándy (1899–1985). This childhood experience later became symbolically significant in his career.
His childhood was marked by extraordinary sensitivity. According to his recollections, he was especially sensitive to visual impressions – when he was still so short that his eyes were level with the corners of tables and chairs, he would often complain: “Mother, the furniture hurts my eyes.” The sight of sharp objects, such as needles or scissors, also irritated him. He later learned to manage these sensitivities consciously, partly with the help of psychoanalysis and through studying the works of Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961).
Music studies and the influence of Zoltán Kodály
His career began as that of a child prodigy: already in his childhood he regularly gave piano concerts. His musical interest first appeared when he met his sister’s piano teacher, Margit Kovács (1903–1978), to whom he played – by ear – the Boccherini minuet he had heard on the radio, finding not only the melody but also the harmonies. At the age of six, although still below the age requirement, he was admitted to the Debrecen Music School by performing Liszt’s Rhapsody no. II.
His first public concert was a Mozart memorial evening when he was eight years old: the event was introduced by a poem by Pál Gulyás (1899–1944), and under the baton of János Baranyi (1893–1976), director of the Municipal Music School, the Figaro Overture, Eine kleine Nachtmusik, the Piano Concerto in D major (K. 175), and the G-minor Symphony were performed. The concert – and especially the rehearsals – proved formative.
At the age of ten he joined the students of Ernő Dohnányi (1877–1960), and at fourteen he won first prize in the Liszt Competition of the Academy of Music. These experiences shaped him deeply – it was at this time that he decided he also wanted to become a conductor. In 1953 he earned his artist’s diploma from the Piano Department of the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music, where his teachers were József Gát (1913–1967) and Lajos Hernádi (1898–1984). With the latter, unfortunately, he never developed a genuine Master–disciple relationship.
Zoltán Kodály (1882–1967) played a decisive role in his life, especially after the deportation of his parents. The period following the Second World War caused a deep rupture in the family’s life. In 1951 Vásáry’s parents were deported, and he was already sitting on the truck with them when a policeman arrived with the order: “Which one of you is Tamás Vásáry? You stay here!” Only later did the young musician learn that Zoltán Kodály and Ede Zathureczky (1903–1959), director of the Academy of Music, had personally secured his exemption by appealing to the Minister of the Interior, Árpád Házi (1908–1970).
His parents ended up in difficult circumstances in Jászkarajenő, near Cegléd. Later, with Kodály’s help – who spoke personally with Zoltán Vas (1903–1983) and József Révai (1898–1959), the era’s dominant cultural policymakers – it was arranged that they be transferred to Zelemér, to the former manor house of his grandfather Baltazár.
When his family was taken away, Tamás Vásáry went to see his piano teacher, Lajos Hernádi, who informed him that Kodály wanted to see him. The first moments of the meeting were difficult: Kodály gave him various musical tasks, such as playing Bach duos with reversed hands or transposing fugues into different keys. After this, however, he handed him a bundle of hundred-forint notes “to get started,” and advised him to keep a diary, because his life would be an interesting one.
With Kodály’s support he was able to continue his studies, and he also received a job at the Concert Directorate Muzsika. It was likewise upon Kodály’s recommendation that he was appointed a solfège teacher at the Academy of Music even before obtaining his diploma. Later, however, he had to choose: when he was discovered in the Soviet Union as a soloist and had to participate in more and more international competitions, teaching solfège and performing could no longer be reconciled. He stood before Kodály with great anxiety about this decision, knowing that solfège instruction was a central element of his master’s music-educational policy. Kodály, however, answered generously with only: “If it doesn’t work, then let’s leave it at that.”
Kodály supported him not only professionally but also personally. When Vásáry complained to him about his poor-quality Viennese-action piano, Kodály asked him to pick out an instrument. In the end, he paid for the twenty-two-thousand-forint new Steinway piano, but in order to avoid expressions of gratitude he sent the cheque with his housekeeper. When Vásáry later met him on the street and tried to thank him, Kodály said only: “You may thank me by learning the entire Wohltemperiertes Klavier by heart, in every key, and at least four foreign languages.”
International career and the years of emigration
His artistic career began with outstanding success in Leningrad and Moscow. In the 1950s he achieved remarkable results at several major international competitions:
1955: prize-winner at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw
1955: prize-winner at the Marguerite Long Competition in Paris
1956: prize-winner at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels
1957: prize-winner at the international competition in Rio de Janeiro
The success in Brussels held particular significance in his life: when his father was imprisoned by the Kádár regime at the end of 1956, the young pianist personally appealed to Queen Elisabeth of Belgium (1876–1965) for help in securing his father’s release. His father was eventually freed from prison, and Vásáry chose to share the fate of his parents as they left their homeland.
Their first year in emigration was spent in Belgium, where they lived with the family of a music-loving physician. From there he travelled to the Rio piano competition, where –due to unjust scoring – he placed only fifth. The fees from his Brazilian concerts supported the family for a year. Before moving to Switzerland, they placed three slips of paper into a hat with the countries each of them suggested: Vásáry voted for Switzerland, his father for England, and his mother for Germany. In the end, with the help of the Red Cross, they managed to settle in Switzerland, where they were given accommodation in a retirement home. They received Swiss citizenship in 1972.
During the first years of emigration, a fortunate coincidence launched his international career: in Brussels, at a dinner hosted by a banker, he played Liszt’s La Campanella, which led to a recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon. His 1958 Liszt album was nominated in England for the title of “record of the year”, praised by critic Lionel Solfel (1914–1999), followed by the recording of the two Liszt piano concertos. In 1960 he made his London debut, performing at Wigmore Hall and the Royal Festival Hall, and the BBC made a television recording with him. After the review in The Times, his international career rose rapidly.
In 1962, he made his New York debut at Carnegie Hall under the baton of György Széll (1897-1970). The first years of his emigration were a period of hard work - during a particularly intense period he gave 125 concerts worldwide in nine months. Even after that, he gave an average of 100 concerts a year in the world's most important music centres, working with such eminent conductors as Ernest Ansermet (1883-1969), André Cluytens (1905-1967), Paul Kletzki (1900-1973), Ferenc Fricsay (1914-1963), André Previn (1929-2019), Claudio Abbado (1933-2014) and Sir Simon Rattle (1955*).
His first marriage was also connected to his life in emigration. At the 1957 Rio de Janeiro competition he met Lajos Kutasi Kovács (1920–2004), editor of the South American Hungarian News, who interviewed him. Later, through a curious twist of fate, Kutasi Kovács’s daughter Ildikó (1947–1994) first married the young Hungarian poet Albert Jánosfalvi, at whose wedding Vásáry served as best man. After Jánosfalvi’s tragic death in a car accident, Vásáry and Ildikó fell in love. Although the musician initially struggled with moral dilemmas about loving the widow of his friend, they eventually married in 1966. They lived in a happy marriage for twenty-eight years, until Ildikó died of cancer in London in 1994 at the age of forty-seven.
The many recordings Vásáry made for Deutsche Grammophon secured his international fame and a continuous stream of concert engagements. However, when Elsa Schiller (1897–1977), the Hungarian-German producer, left the company in 1965, the opportunity for Hungarian artists to record there ceased. Vásáry’s own position also became precarious. When he cancelled the recording of the Mendelssohn piano concertos because of a Salzburg concert, he was informed that the label did not plan to continue working with him. After this he was allowed to record only when no other performer could be found – this is how he came to record all of Rachmaninoff’s piano concertos and several Brahms works. The deterioration of his relationship with Deutsche Grammophon negatively affected his career, although he later made recordings with other labels as well (Chandos, Collins).
He was a regular guest at the world’s foremost music festivals, performing at the Salzburg Festival, the Edinburgh Festival, the Berlin Festival, as well as at the BBC Proms, the Holland Festival, and the Budapest Spring Festival. Through these regular festival appearances, he became a widely recognised figure in the international musical world.
The Conducting Career
The possibility of a real conducting career first appeared in 1956, when he and Aladár Tóth (1898–1968, director of the Hungarian State Opera between 1946 and 1956) criticised a current performance of Lucia di Lammermoor. Tóth offered him a position at the Opera as a répétiteur and later as a conductor, but the revolution and his father’s arrest made this impossible. As Vásáry later remarked: “If ’56 hadn’t happened, if my father hadn’t been arrested, I would have returned home from Belgium, gone to the Opera, and today I would be a contented opera conductor. That is what I truly would have wanted.”
His conducting career finally began in 1970, when André Böröcz (1919–1998), director of the Montreux Festival, invited him to conduct the Liszt Chamber Orchestra. Soon he had his own ensembles: first the Northern Sinfonia (1979–1982), then the Bournemouth Sinfonietta (1989–1997). He conducted many of the world’s most renowned orchestras, from the New York Philharmonic to the Berlin Philharmonic. He also made recordings as a conductor – particularly memorable is the Mozart recording (1979) made after Herbert von Karajan’s (1908–1989) stroke, for which he served both as pianist and conductor; the critics received it with great enthusiasm. Over time, conducting came to take up an increasingly large share of his artistic activity, and by his own account represents roughly three quarters of his musical work.
The Return Home and New Opportunities
He visited Hungary again for the first time in 1972. The trip home was a special experience, as he arrived with his first wife, who had been born in emigration and had never before set foot in Hungary. For her, it was a defining moment to hear everyone speaking Hungarian, while Vásáry could not get enough of the joy of reunion.
Originally, they had hoped to buy a house in Hungary, but it turned out that this was not simple for a foreigner – not even with the intercession of Annie Fischer (1914–1995), who enjoyed a good relationship with the cultural policymaker György Aczél (1917–1991). Yet the process of returning nevertheless began: at the invitation of Dénes Kovács (1918–1977), violinist and then director of the Liszt Academy, he was able to hold a masterclass there – as it later became clear, this too happened at Aczél’s instruction.
After the death of conductor János Ferencsik (1907–1984), György Aczél summoned him personally and offered him the leadership of the State Concert Orchestra. It was not a simple situation. When Vásáry asked how the orchestra felt about this, Aczél gave a short reply: “This isn’t a democracy where we ask them.” Yet Vásáry knew that the orchestra preferred Ken-Ichiro Kobayashi (1940*), and that forcing a conductor on an ensemble by political command could not lead to anything good, so he refused.
Fate ultimately marked out a different path for him: on one occasion, when he was conducting the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, after the very first concert the leadership invited him in a formal letter to become their conductor. This was an entirely different situation, since it was the orchestra itself that called him. Thus began his long and fruitful relationship with the Radio ensembles. As a consequence, he and his wife moved to Hungary in 1993, and despite his Swiss citizenship he spent most of the following decades here.
At the Head of the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
Between 1993 and 2004 he served as Music Director of the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. He threw himself into the work with great enthusiasm, conducting Hungarian contemporary music – for example works by Zsolt Durkó (1934–1997), Sándor Balassa (1935–2021) and Sándor Szokolay (1931–2013) – just as readily as a Beethoven cycle, or Edvard Grieg’s (1843–1907) incidental music for Henrik Ibsen’s (1828–1906) Peer Gynt at the Margaret Island Open-Air Stage.
He recorded several albums of Beethoven and Mozart with the ensemble. Reviving the orchestral works of his former teachers, Dohnányi and Kodály, was also among his goals. He was the first in Hungary to record Dohnányi’s Suite in F-sharp minor and Symphonic Minutes (1996), and two years later the two violin concertos and the Konzertstück for cello solo. Among his plans was the complete recording of Kodály’s oeuvre, but he did not receive sufficient funding for this.
He also maintained fruitful collaborations with Hungarian musicians, including – in addition to Vilmos Szabadi (1959–) – the pianists Tamás Érdi (1979–), Péter Frankl (1935–) and Endre Hegedűs (1954–). To the surprise of the classical music audience, in 2003 he agreed to take part in Zorán’s (Zoran Sztevanovity, 1942–) celebratory evening, which he did with pleasure, not least because he had previously never the opportunity to make a light-hearted piano recording.
With the orchestra he gave successful concert tours in Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands. During their South American tour, Mstislav Rostropovich (1927–2007) played the solo parts in the concertos of Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) and Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975).
The final years of this period were not free from conflict. When the Ministry of Culture transformed the State Concert Orchestra into the National Philharmonic and raised their salaries – as it did for the Festival Orchestra as well – but not those of the Radio Orchestra, it demoralised the musicians. When he heard rumours that he had allegedly asked for several million for himself but not for the musicians, he resigned from his post. The relationship, however, did not end permanently: in 2014 he was invited back as Music Director of the Hungarian Radio Art Groups, and since then he has given a concert series every season. From 2020 onward he has served as Chief Conductor of the Hungarian Radio Art Groups.
Private life and social engagement
He had two defining marriages. From 1966 until her death in 1994, he was married to Ildikó, daughter of the writer Lajos Kutasi Kovács (1920–1989). His second marriage was to the ballet artist Henriett Tunyogi (1970–), with whom he lived for sixteen years; they divorced in 2019. He consciously chose not to have children.
His sense of social responsibility is exemplary: in 2013 he established the Tamás Vásáry Scholarship, and in 2017 he founded the ChildBridge Foundation (Gyermekhíd Alapítvány), which helps children living in foster care integrate into society through individual mentorship. He remains an active artist to this day, regularly performing and teaching masterclasses. He maintains his mental and physical vitality through regular exercise and yoga, particularly practising kundalini yoga.
Tamás Vásáry’s career stands as a model in both Hungarian and international musical life. As both pianist and conductor, he has created a lasting legacy, and his artistry has been recognised at the highest levels by both the profession and the public. Throughout his life’s work, he has consistently sought to preserve and transmit the values of classical music, while remaining open to new challenges. His journey is exceptional not only from a professional standpoint, but also through the moral example he sets – making him a defining figure in the history of Hungarian culture.
Conceptions of art and spirituality
Vásáry's conception of art is closely intertwined with his spiritual views. In his view, science studies the material world, while only one part of man is material, the other immaterial. In his view, a large part of life cannot be rationally explained or conveyed. As he puts it, "when the sun is shining, you can't see the starry sky, but it's much bigger."
He believes that the universe has a consciousness, what religious people call God, the non-religious energy, and we are part of it. He sees the same connection between the universe and man as between cells and the human body. He sees yoga, especially the kundalini practices he does regularly, as important for spiritual development. He believes that "birth and earthly existence are only a small part of our life. That's why I'm not afraid of death, because it opens another door, which I'm very interested in, and I'm convinced that we will be in a better world. I believe that everything is good as it is."
Authenticity and emotional impact play a central role in Vásáry's conception of art. For him, the primary measure of the value of art is the emotional world – he believes that music, poetry or any work of art that does not move you, does not make an impression on your emotions, cannot be considered true art. He takes a firm stand on the question of classicism: excellence lies not in the age of creation but in the quality of the work.
He is critical of trends in modern composition, especially the contemporary critical expectation that contemporary compositions must necessarily be a product of the present. He draws parallels with music of the 19th century, when the vast majority of compositions were based on harmonies that the public loved and understood. He cites the example of Richard Wagner (1813-1883), whose critics wrongly predicted that his art would only be appreciated in the future. He is a traditionalist, not only in music but also in the visual arts and literature, and he is a firm believer that excellence can be achieved in all styles.
[2024]