Whoever has heard János Balázs play only once in their life must have had a highly
impressive and unique concert experience since the pianist has a great knack for reaching
the audience and making the distance between performer and listener fade away. He
achieves this by – besides his fascinating technique – the delicate subtlety of his
performance, the spellbinding colourfulness of his tones and the incredible limitlessness of
his dynamic scope. His concerts enlisting the repertoire of the 19th-century Golden Age take
us on time travel: beyond being able to re-create the intimate atmosphere of the period's
great composers and pianists, such as Franz Liszt or Frédéric Chopin, János Balázs also
revives the Romantic traditions himself with his own arrangements, transcriptions and
fascinating improvisations. It is, therefore, no coincidence that he is a returning guest artist
of Europe's top-ranking concert halls and that he has collected nearly all professional and
state decorations of his home country as well as the title Young Steinway Artist and the state
award of Poland for performing Chopin's complete piano works. In 2016, he launched the
György Cziffra Festival, dedicated to preserving the intellectual and musical legacy of his
great role model. In a repertoire also inherited from Cziffra, János Balázs reveals the very
best of his skills and the most profound layers of his musicianship: in Liszt's lyrically sensitive
works and concert pieces with a Hungarian touch and his Puccini, Verdi and Schumann re-
arrangements, regardless whether it is a contemporary piece or János Balázs' own
breathtakingly true, yet unique and honest arrangement.
Programme:
Liszt: Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este,
Liszt: Ave Maria (Les Cloches de Rome),
Ponce-Balázs: Estrellita,
Puccini-Balázs: Lauretta’s Arias,
Schumann-Liszt: Widmung,
Verdi-Liszt: Rigoletto paraphrases,
Delibes-Balázs: Coppelia paraphrases,
Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6