Valéria Szervánszky (born October 1947) is a Hungarian classical

pianist A pianist ( , ) is a musician who plays the piano. A pianist's repertoire may include music from a diverse variety of styles, such as traditional classical music, jazz piano, jazz, blues piano, blues, and popular music, including rock music, ...

, born in Budapest and now a resident of the United Kingdom.

Life

Szervánszky studied at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

with

Pál Kadosa Pál Kadosa (; 6 September 1903, Léva, Austria-Hungary (now Levice, Slovakia) – 30 March 1983, Budapest) was a pianist and Hungarian composer of the post- Bartók generation. His early style was influenced by Hungarian folklore while his ...

and

György Kurtág György Kurtág (; born 19 February 1926) is a Hungarian composer of contemporary classical music and pianist. According to ''Grove Music Online'', with a style that draws on " Bartók, Webern and, to a lesser extent, Stravinsky, his work is c ...

. In 1973 she joined the highly prestigious class of Professor

Hans Leygraf Hans Leygraf (7 September 1920 – 12 February 2011) was a Swedish pianist, music educator, conductor and composer. Life Born in Stockholm, Leygraf studied piano with in Stockholm and Anna Hirzel-Langenhan in Switzerland. He was one of Swede ...

at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Theater in

Hannover Hanover ( ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the States of Germany, German state of Lower Saxony. Its population of 535,932 (2021) makes it the List of cities in Germany by population, 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-l ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

, and on graduating returned to the Liszt Academy to teach the Exceptionally Gifted Children's Class with Professor Klára Máthé, where she also worked as an assistant to Professor Kadosa. Szervánszky also played for the cello class of Miklos Perényi. In 1979 she took up a position as professor of piano at Musashino Academy of Music in Tokyo and taught in Japan until moving to London in 1986. Szervánszky is the daughter of the post-impressionist artist, Jenő Szervánszky and the niece of the composer,

Endre Szervánszky Endre Szervánszky (27 December 191125 June 1977) was a Hungarian composer. Biography Szervánszky was born in Kistétény and studied the clarinet at the Budapest Academy of Music (1922–27). He played in various orchestras before returnin ...

and violinist, Péter Szervánszky.

Teaching and masterclasses

Szervánszky is active as both a pianist and teacher. She travels to Tokyo several times a year for master-classes and teaching. In London she teaches at the

Purcell School for Young Musicians The Purcell School for Young Musicians is a specialist private music school for children, located in the town of Bushey, south Hertfordshire, England, and is the oldest specialist music school in the UK. The school was awarded the UNESCO Mozar ...

. She is also in demand for music courses and has taught at the International Bartók Festival in Hungary, the British Kodály Academy, the twentieth-century music course at the Centre Acanthes, Avignon, the Orlando Festival in Holland and the International Musician's Seminar at Prussia Cove.

Performances

Since 1979, Szervánszky has concentrated primarily on the piano duo partnership with her husband, Ronald Cavaye and they have performed extensively in Europe and the Far East - particularly in Japan. They have broadcast for the BBC and Hungarian Radio and also recorded the Mozart concertos for two and three pianos and Stravinsky’s own arrangement of ''

The Rite of Spring ''The Rite of Spring'' () is a ballet and orchestral concert work by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It was written for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company; the original choreography was by Vaslav Nijinsky ...

'' for piano duet, together with works by Ravel and Debussy. They have also frequently worked with the Hungarian composer

. In the autumn of 1996 Szervánszky directed Kurtág’s incidental music incorporated in a new production of

Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Rus ...

's play ''Der Pol'' (''The Pole'') in Berlin, Paris (Paris Autumn Festival), Zurich and Lausanne. Szervánszky and Ronald Cavaye made the first complete CD recording of the first four volumes (solos, duets and two pianos) of Kurtág's collection of pieces Játékok – Games. At the 1994 International Bartók Festival they gave the Hungarian première of Kurtág’s Lebenslauf for two pianos and two basset horns and have since performed the work in Budapest and London (with members of the

London Sinfonietta The London Sinfonietta is an English contemporary chamber music, chamber orchestra founded in 1968 and based in London. The ensemble has headquarters at Kings Place and is Resident Orchestra at the Southbank Centre. Since its inaugural concert ...

). Szervánszky and Cavaye have written a guide for teachers and students to the first volume of Mikrokosmos by

Béla Bartók Béla Viktor János Bartók (; ; 25 March 1881 – 26 September 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist and ethnomusicologist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Franz Liszt are regarded as Hunga ...

, published in Japanese by the Zen-On Music Publishing Company. Szervánszky is a

Steinway Steinway & Sons, also known as Steinway (), is a German-American piano company, founded in 1853 in New York City by German piano builder Henry E. Steinway, Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg (later known as Henry E. Steinway). The company's growth le ...

Artist.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Szervanszky, Valeria Classical piano duos 1947 births Living people 21st-century Hungarian classical pianists Hungarian women classical pianists 21st-century women pianists Valeria