Artist database

This is the Artist Database of BMC, which includes information about composers, musicians, orchestras, choirs and groups that are either Hungarian or Hungarian by origin or live in Hungary, as well as information about releases recorded with them.

Szalai András


cimbalom

Place of Birth
Budapest
Date of Birth
1985

 
He studied at the Bartók Béla Secondary School of Music, Cimbalom Department from 1999 to 2003, at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music, Cimbalom Department between 2003 and 2008 and at the Composition Department from 2004 to 2009. He's been a DLA student at the Academy since 2014.

His interests are focused on 20th century and contemporary music performance. Over the past 10 years he has performed or presented solo and chamber works by numerous Hungarian contemporary composers.

He places particular emphasis on presenting the works of young composers. He has taken part in all the composers’ competitions of the New Hungarian Music Forum; earlier he participated (as composer and as performer) in all the Youth Contemporary Music Evenings. He is a significant performer of works written for the cimbalom by György Kurtág, who in October 2009 composed a solo piece for him.

He has performed at the Budapest Spring Festival, the Szombathely Bartók Seminar and the Kaposfest on numerous occasions, both as soloist and as chamber musician. In the past few years he has attended virtually all the Festivals of Music of Our Age and the New Hungarian Works concert cycle.
He is a frequent guest at European music festivals. He regularly plays early music arrangements at his concerts.

He has played together with the Slovene, Warsaw, Cracow, Lodz, Valencia Philharmonic Orchestras, the Helsinki Avanti chamber orchestra, and virtually all the symphony orchestras of Hungary.

He has worked with conductors Olivier Cuendet, Péter Eötvös, János Fürst, András Keller, Zoltán Kocsis, János Kovács, Ingo Metzmacher, Zoltán Rácz, Zsolt Serei, István Silló, László Tihanyi, Gergely Vajda, Tamás Vásáry, Walter Weller, Antoni Wit; and performers such as Gábor Csalog, Csaba Klenyán, Claire Chase, Evelyn Glennie, Helena Winkelmann and Natalia Zagorinskaya.

He was honored with Artisjus Prize in 2009 and 2022.