The Budapest Concert (2020

After the war, when musical activities resumed, Starker became principal cellist of the Budapest Opera and the Budapest Philharmonic orchestras. Soviet Red Army forces had occupied the country, and the Communist Party was gaining dominance. Starker left the country in 1946 when relatively free travel was still possible. He gave a successful concert in Vienna, then remained there to prepare for the Geneva Cello Competition, held in October 1946. He won only a bronze medal. "I played like a blind man," he said. "What happens to the bird who sings and doesn't know how it sings? That's what happens to child prodigies." Starker set out to rebuild his technique. He analyzed all aspects of playing, from breathing to the physics of applying muscular force to the bow and the instrument, to phrasing, bowing, and fingering. By October of the following year he had regained his confidence. He decided to stay in the West due to the deteriorating political situation in Hungary, and headed for the United States, where Hungarian musicians had important positions.

After the war, when musical activities resumed, Starker became principal cellist of the Budapest Opera and the Budapest Philharmonic orchestras. Soviet Red Army forces had occupied the country, and the Communist Party was gaining dominance. Starker left the country in 1946 when relatively free travel was still possible. He gave a successful concert in Vienna, then remained there to prepare for the Geneva Cello Competition, held in October 1946. He won only a bronze medal. "I played like a blind man," he said. "What happens to the bird who sings and doesn't know how it sings? That's what happens to child prodigies." Starker set out to rebuild his technique. He analyzed all aspects of playing, from breathing to the physics of applying muscular force to the bow and the instrument, to phrasing, bowing, and fingering. By October of the following year he had regained his confidence. He decided to stay in the West due to the deteriorating political situation in Hungary, and headed for the United States, where Hungarian musicians had important positions.

MŪZA Rubackytė was born in Lithuania and shares her time between Vilnius, Paris and Geneva. After diplomas at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory of Moscow, she was a prize-winner at the All Union Competition in St. Petersburg. In 1981 she won the Grand Prix at the Liszt-Bartok International Piano Competition in Budapest. Member of the Lithuanian resistance, she was only able to leave the USSR in 1989. In Paris she won First Prize at the Concours international Les Grands Maîtres Français, of the Triptyque Association, created by Ravel, Dukas and Roussel. In France, Mūza is invited to the prestigious festivals and concert places: Fêtes Romantiques- Nohant, Radio France-Montpellier, Musique en côte Basque, Festival Chopin-Paris, Bagatelle, Lisztomanias, Tons voisins… Gaveau, Champs Elysées, Unesco, Opéra Bastille, Capitole-Toulouse… Lisztienne in heart, she was one of the first pianists to perform the entire Liszt’s Years of Pilgrimage in three concerts on the same day, alone or in the company of renowned actors.

The Divine Art label has long been associated with music for piano duo – whether at two pianos or one – through the sterling and brilliant work of Goldstone and Clemmow and more recently Piano-à-Deux. The label is delighted to welcome a new duo with this program which contains several very popular and well-loved miniatures and transcriptions, bookended by major works from Liszt and Milhaud. They need no introduction save to say that from the dances, to the jazz-inflected pieces, each work is a joy to hear.

Liszt was the son of a steward in the service of the Esterházy family, patrons of Haydn. He was born in 1811 at Raiding in Hungary and moved as a child to Vienna, where he took piano lessons from Czerny and composition lessons from Salieri. Two years later, in 1823, he moved with his family to Paris, from where he toured as a pianist. Influenced by the phenomenal violinist Paganini, he turned his attention to the development of a similar technique as a pianist and in 1835 left Paris with his mistress, the Comtesse d’Agoult, with whom he travelled widely during the following years as his reputation as a pianist of astonishing powers grew.

The Croatian pianist Goran Filipec has specialized in the virtuoso repertory of Liszt and other Romantic composers. His concert career has been international, stretching from the Western hemisphere to Japan, and his recording catalog has grown rapidly in the late 2010s. Filipec was born in Rijeka, then part of Yugoslavia, in 1981. He studied piano at the Ino Mirkovic Academy with Marina Ambokadze and Evgeny Zarafiants, moving on to the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne, Germany, the Oxana Yablonskaya Piano Institute in Lugano, Switzerland, the Tchaikovsky State Conservatory in Moscow, and the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Netherlands. After this top-notch education he scored top prizes at the Gabala International Piano Competition in Azerbaijan and the José Iturbi International Piano Competition in Los Angeles in 2009, the Concurso de Parnassos in Monterrey, Mexico, in 2010, and the Concorso Pianistico Internazionale Franz Liszt in Parma, Italy, in 2011.

In 1934, 17-year-old Ella Fitzgerald took the stage at Harlem's legendary Apollo Theater on Amateur Night, winning first prize and launching an extraordinary, decade-spanning career.

The young American pianist Claire Huangci, winner of the first prize and the Mozart prize at the 2018 Geza Anda Competition, continuously captivates audiences with her “radiant virtuosity, artistic sensitivity, keen interactive sense and subtle auditory dramaturgy” (Salzburger Nachrichten). With an irrepressible curiosity and penchant for unusual repertoire, she proves her versatility with a wide range in repertoire spanning from Bach and Scarlatti, to Bernstein, Gulda, and Corigliano.