Péter Nagy

Pianist Péter Nagy has sustained the momentum of an unusually precocious international career. A prominent performer and educator in his native Hungary, he has also appeared widely in the West as a soloist and chamber music player.
Nagy was born in Máteszalka, in northeastern Hungary, on April 26, 1960. He took up the piano early and was admitted to the prestigious Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest when he was eight. He took second prize at an international competition in Usti nad Labem, Czechoslovakia, at age 11, and in his late teens he brought in several more competition wins, including first prize at the Hungarian Radio Competition in 1979 and an honor at the Bordeaux Festival of Young Soloists a year later, his first prize outside Eastern Europe. These wins launched Nagy on an international career trajectory that has included tours across Europe, including top venues in Britain (Wigmore Hall in London), France (the Louvre), and the U.S. (the 92nd Street Y). He has also appeared in Japan (as soloist with the Tokyo and Yomiuri Symphony Orchestras), Australia, and New Zealand. An enthusiastic chamber player, Nagy has performed with such collaborators as violist Kim Kashkashian, pianist Zoltán Kocsis, and cellist Boris Pergamenschikow, as well as several string quartets.
Nagy’s large recording catalog is focused on the Naxos label, beginning when he recorded the album Romantic Piano Favourites, Vol. 4, in 1988. Most of his albums have seen him in the role of collaborator in duo works and chamber music. He has backed violinist Leonidas Kavakos on a pair of recordings on the ECM label, and in the 2000s and 2010s, he appeared in duo albums on Oehms, Hyperion, and Berlin Classics; on the latter imprint, he joined cellist Claudio Bohórquez for the album Schumann: Poetica in 2020. Nagy holds the position of professor of piano at both the Liszt Academy in Budapest and the Hochschule für Musik in Stuttgart. ~ James Manheim