Artist database

6 September 1903 (Léva) - 30 March 1983 (Budapest)

Pál Kadosa was born on September 6, 1903, in Léva (Levice) — a small town that is now part of Slovakia. His original name was Pál Veisz, which he changed to the Hungarian-sounding Kadosa sometime in the early 1920s. Having lost his father at an early age, he spent his elementary school years in Nagyszombat (Trnava) with his grandparents, and it was there that he took his first steps at the piano. In 1918 his mother remarried, and the fifteen-year-old boy, who moved to Budapest with his family, this time seriously embarked on his musical studies: first diligently attending piano lessons with Ilona Pál, and then, three years later, starting in 1921 at the Academy of Music, where he learned playing the piano (Arnold Székely, Lili Keleti), chamber music (Leó Weiner), and composition (Zoltán Kodály). He earned his degree in 1927. However, the young Kadosa, living through his “Sturm und Drang” period, was not satisfied with music alone: he studied painting and drawing, and also maintained close ties with figures in literary circles (Róbert Berényi, Sándor Bortnyik, István Dési Huber, Arnold Sugár, Pál Pátzay, György Goldmann). He was not yet twenty years old when, in 1923, he made his public debut as a composer with his Piano Suite No. 1. He held his first solo recital on May 2, 1933, and achieved his first international success the same year in Amsterdam with his Piano Concerto No. 1. His debut in Budapest was followed as early as 1925 by the Berlin premiere of two of his works. After that, he presented his works one after another both at home and in Europe and the United States. His Piano Sonata No. 2 was performed at the Pyrmont and Kassel Festivals, his Divertimento No. 1 in Venice, and his String Quartet No. 2 in New York.

In 1928 Kadosa became a founding member of the Modern Hungarian Musicians (which later merged into the reorganized New Hungarian Music Society, operating as an affiliate of the International Society for Contemporary Music), and from 1932 onward, he was a leading figure in the New Hungarian Music Society. Schott, one of Europe’s most prominent music publishers, based in Mainz, already had more than a dozen of Kadosa’s works in its catalog at the time; however, the Nazi regime’s rise to power put an end to this promising relationship. Storm clouds were gathering at home as well: during the dark years of the war, Kadosa was first deprived of the opportunity to teach, and then the inhumanities he endured during forced labor nearly cost him his life.

Fortunately, however, Kadosa did not suffer the same fate as Radnóti, and in the years following the war, he became one of the most active public figures in the new musical institutional system: Vice President of the Cultural Council (between 1945 and 1949), member of the Executive Board of the Association of Hungarian Musicians (and on several occasions its acting president too), president of the Copyright Protection Office and the music committee of the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC), and was also elected an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music in London and a member of the Deutsche Akademie der Künste — and the list is by no means exhaustive.

Pál Kadosa’s work as a piano teacher was also significant. From 1927 until 1943, he taught piano at the Fodor Music School — an institution of legendary renown during the interwar period that was founded in the very year of Kadosa’s birth: the pedagogical experience he gained during the 15 years he spent there would bear true fruit decades later, when he served as head of department at the Academy of Music. In 1943–44, he taught at the Goldmark Music School, though this was interrupted by forced labor. After his return, from 1945 until his death, he taught at the Academy of Music, where he became a teacher and later the head of the piano department: during his decades-long teaching career, he mentored world-renowned musicians whom we now regard as celebrated luminaries of the domestic and international music scene. To name just a few: Jenő Jandó, Zoltán Kocsis, György Kurtág, Dezső Ránki, András Schiff and Gyula Kiss. Despite all this, he still found time to compose, and although Kadosa was present in elementary schools as recently as a decade and a half ago through his popular songs, his works have been heard only rarely since then. In addition to Bartók and Kodály, his art was greatly influenced by the early avant-garde and German neoclassicism. The entire classical music repertoire can be found among his works. Kadosa composed eight symphonies and a chamber symphony, four piano concertos, two violin concertos, and numerous other concertos, the two-act opera The Adventure at Huszt, Op. 40 (based on a short story by Jókai), which premiered in 1951, as well as countless chamber, piano, and choral works.

Prizes:

1946 - Freedom Prize
1946 - small cross of the Honour of the People's Republic
1950 – Kossuth Prize
1953 – Honour of Merited Artist
1955, 1962 – Ferenc Erkel Prize
1963 – Honour of Outstanding Artist
1965 - honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music in London
1970 - the Golden Degree of the Labour Decoration
1970 - member of the East German Academy of Arts and Letters
1973 - Order of Flags of the Hungarian People's Republic
1975 - Honour for Socialist Culture
1975 – Kossuth Prize


see also: Kadosa Pál - pianist