Balog József zongorakoncertje / BARTÓK TAVASZ 2024

 Csaba Szabó (1936–2003), who hailed from Transylvania, was a versatile composer working in the most diverse genres, including solo piano pieces, which he wrote between 1955 and 1981. József Balog has recently recorded all of the composer’s works for piano, offering a chance now to observe directly how rich this part of the composer’s œuvre is in terms of form, technique and content, and how his style underwent complex transformations over the decades. The first piano pieces are youthful works that reveal both the joy of composing for the instrument and the chief sources of inspiration. His studying of folk music led to changes in his own musical idiom, and the output of the 1970s has the effect of a veritable avant-garde turn. After he moved to Hungary in 1987, Szabó taught at the Berzsenyi Dániel College of Szombathely until his death.