Peter Józsa was born in Hungary in 1975 and ranks among the most outstanding pianists of his generation. When he participated in the 2006 Carl Bechstein International Piano Competition, he was awarded a special prize as the “most remarkable musical personality”. In the autumn of 2014, he opened the series of concerts given by Duisburg's Philharmonic Orchestra with the “C. Bechstein Piano Evening” held every year at the Mercatorhalle.
Peter Józsa was born in Hungary in 1975 and ranks among the most outstanding pianists of his generation. When he participated in the 2006 Carl Bechstein International Piano Competition, he was awarded a special prize as the “most remarkable musical personality”. In the autumn of 2014, he opened the series of concerts given by Duisburg’s Philharmonic Orchestra with the “C. Bechstein Piano Evening” held every year at the Mercatorhalle.
Zoltán Kocsis, a noted Hungarian pianist, once stated that Peter Józsa was a brilliant and mature musician of distinctively international rank. At the age of ten, Józsa was already so talented that he was admitted to the preparatory class at Budapest’s Franz Liszt Musical Academy, where he studied successively under Katalin Nemes, László Bihary, György Nádor and Ferenc Rados. He performed for the first time in Germany when he was twelve at an international concert given in Aalen.
After winning prizes at the Usti Nad-Laben and Ettlingen international piano competitions in 1989 and 1990 respectively, he went on to perform regularly in various European countries from the age of sixteen onwards. In 1997, he was a pupil at the master class given by Professor Boris Bloch at Essen’s Folkwang University of the Arts, prior to taking private lessons and participating in further master classes given by András Schiff, György Kurtág, Leon Fleisher, Dmitri Bashkirov, Oleg Maisenberg and Marie-Francoise Bucquet. A recipient of the Initiativkreis Ruhrgebiet grant in 1999, he achieved great success with his interpretation of Chopin’s Piano Concerto Nr. 1 during the opening concert of the Ruhr Festival. In 2000, he was awarded the famous Folkwang prize.
In the same year, Peter Józsa was selected among ninety-eight competitors to perform Beethoven’s Piano Concert Nr. 4 at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, together with the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra directed by Philippe Entremont. In 2002, he won a prize for his interpretation of Béla Bartók’s Piano Sonata during the Summer Academy organised at Salzburg’s Mozarteum, and in the following year, he took first prize at the competition organised by Duisburg’s Köhler-Osbahr Foundation. Also in 2003, he finished his studies at the Folkwang University of the Arts with the commendation of the examiners. Peter Józsa has been teaching piano at Graz’s University of the Arts since 2013.
Photo: © C.Bechstein
