Artist database

After having studied under professor Pál Kadosa at the piano department of the Budapest Liszt Academy of Music, she graduated with distinction in 1948. In the same year, she won third prize in the Geneva International Piano Concours. Soon thereafter she established herself as a coveted pianist in Hungary’s concert halls and gained renown in many foreign countries as well.
Although her repertory ranges from Bach to contemporary composers, Mrs. Tusa has a special penchant for Liszt, Debussy and Bartók, whose works she has committed to gramophone records. As she has set herself the task of propagating the late, unknown works of Liszt, she frequently plays them at many of her recitals and has written a series of articles about them for a prestigious Hungarian musical journal. She made a widely acclaimed LP featuring some piano works of Debussy, (Images, Vols. 1-2., Estampes, L’Isle Joyeuse), resulting in her being invited to serve as a jury member in the 1978 International Debussy Piano Concours staged at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Mrs. de Tignan, the stepdaughter and the last living relative of Debussy, sent Mrs. Tusa a letter which reads, among others: „I am glad that your country possesses such a fine ambassadress of my stepfather’s compositions as you are”.
Mrs. Tusa is an outstanding performer of Bartók’s piano works, and in 1961 she world-premièred his Scherzo for Piano and Orchestra. „Erzsébet Tusa is a splendid pianist: she interprets the compositions of Béla Bartók, my husband, marvellously”, wrote Mrs. Bartók, Ditta Pásztory, the excellent pianist after a concert at which she combined with Mrs. Tusa in rendering Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos. Since her husband’s death, Ditta Pásztory has been playing this work exclusively with Mrs. Tusa. They also partnered in committing to the gramophone record his Concerto for Two Pianos, and concerted together in Bologna, Geneva, Lugano, Recklinghausen and Salzburg.
Mrs. Tusa has extensively guest-performed in Austria, (Salzburg, Vienna), Bulgaria, the F.R.G., (Bremerhaven, Karlsruhe, Freiburg, Recklinghausen, Paderborn, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Hesischer Rundfunk, Hitzacker Festival), the G.D.R., France (Paris, Radio France) Italy, (Bologna, Parma, Modena, Reggio Emilia, Rome), Switzerland, (Radio Lugano, Radio Basel, Geneva), Poland and Yugoslavia.
Besides her activities as a concert pianist, Mrs. Tusa is engaged in teaching too. She is a professor at the piano department of the Budapest Liszt Academy of Music and was invited to hold masterclasses at Alkmaar, Holland, in 1980.
In appreciation for her fine artistry and for her outstanding merits in spreading Hungarian musical culture both at home and abroad Mrs. Tusa was awarded the Liszt Award in 1968, became a Merited Artist in 1979 and awarded the Bartók-Pásztory Award.