Géza Anda

The pianist Géza Anda was greatly admired for his cultivated, unobtrusively virtuosic and stylistically confident piano playing. He is part of an influential group of Hungarian musicians who played an important role in the world of classical music in the early and central years of the 20th century. Anda's immediate circle included the composer Zoltán Kodály and the composer and pianist Ernst von Dohnányi, with whom he studied; Béla Bartók, whose music he interpreted masterfully; and the conductor Ferenc Fricsay, with whom he had close artistic and personal ties. Anda began his career as an impressive virtuoso, and Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto was and remained one of his showpieces. He later developed more and more into a technically flawless and musically profound interpreter of music of the Classical and Romantic eras in particular. Bartók, whose three piano concertos he recorded under the direction of Ferenc Fricsay – an account celebrated to this day – was an exception in the artist's repertoire as a 20th-century composer. Anda was particularly fond of the works of Schubert, Chopin, Schumann and Mozart, whose piano concertos he recorded in their entirety. In later years, Beethoven's music also became the central to his activity. After his early successes in his home country, the pianist moved to Western Europe. He found the centre of his life in Switzerland. Anda was a regular guest with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra as well as at the Salzburg Festival, was invited to perform as a soloist with the most important orchestras in Western Europe and the USA and recorded numerous works for Deutsche Grammophon. Three years after the artist's death at the age of 54, his widow founded the Concours Géza Anda in 1979, which is still one of the most renowned international piano competitions today.