József Szigeti was a prominent representative of the world-famous Hungarian string school led by Jenő Hubay. His art inspired outstanding composers. With his fellow artists he performed the masterpieces of solo and chamber music literature on extremely high level, with unprecedented elegance and technical perfection.

At the beginning of the seventies he personally discussed the programme of the competition guaranteed by his name with the then Rector of the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music, the violinist Dénes Kovács. The programme has preserved József Szigeti’s ideas and mentality ever since.

Young violinists have more and more competitions all over the world where they can put their talent on display. Viola players have perhaps less opportunities to present their skills.

This is why we thought that this Szigeti competition should give chances for the players of both string instruments, talented violinists and viola-players alike, to appear together and to make interested audiences acquainted with their art.

József Szigeti (5 September 1892 Budapest - 20 February 1973 Luzern)

He learned to play the violin with Jenő Hubay at the Budapest Academy of Music. He achieved great success with his débuts in Berlin and Dresden in 1905 and in London in 1906. From 1906 onwards he was living in England and won fame as a teacher as well. He was a professor at the Conservatory of Geneva between 1917 and 1924. He first gave concerts in the USA in 1925 and settled there in 1926. He played a great part in familiarizing the works of early 20th-century composers, such as Igor Stravinsky, George Enescu, Maurice Ravel and Sergey Prokofiev.

Between 1932 and the outbreak of World War II he repeatedly appeared in Hungary, the last time on 20 April 1939. Béla Bartók dedicated to Szigeti his First Rhapsody, notably the version with piano, then orchestral accompaniment in 1928 and gave with him (and with the contribution of Benny Goodman and Endre Petri) the premiere of the first, two-movement version of his chamber piece entitled Contrasts in the Carnegie Hall of New York in 1939. Later, in April 1940 Columbia of New York recorded the final, three-movement version with the contribution of Bartók, Szigeti and the clarinettist Benny Goodman.

Szigeti gave a concert with Bartók in the Congress Hall of New York as well. They made a joint arrangement of seven pieces of Bartók’s set For Children with the title Hungarian Folk Melodies. At the beginning of the cold war he was regarded as an “undesired person” and even interned once. Although he obtained American citizenship in 1951, he soon left for Switzerland and stayed there once for all. He stopped giving concerts in the late fifties. As honorary president of the Weiner-Bartók Festival he visited Budapest in the autumn of 1963 and gave a lecture on methodology. He was member of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome.

Competition schedule and venues

Source: filharmoniabp.hu