Sir András Schiff
Vita
Born in Budapest in 1953, András Schiff began receiving piano lessons at the age of five from Elisabeth Vadász. He later continued his studies with Pál Kadosa, György Kurtág, and Ferenc Rados in his native city and with George Malcolm in London. His artistic work focuses on the keyboard works of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, and Bartók. Since 2004, Schiff has performed the complete cycle of Beethoven sonatas in more than 20 cities and has additionally recorded them. He regularly performs with major orchestras and conductors, with a focus on performing keyboard concertos by Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart under his own direction. To this end, he founded the Cappella Andrea Barca in 1999; he also works closely with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Schiff has been a passionate chamber musician since his early youth. He directed the Mondsee Music Days from 1989 to 1998 and the Ittingen Whitsun Concerts from 1995 to 2013 (together with Heinz Holliger); since 1998, he has been curating the “Omaggio a Palladio” concert series in Vicenza. He has received international awards for many of his recordings; his most recent albums include accounts of the two Brahms concertos (2021) and of Bach’s Inventions and Symphonies played on a clavichord (2023). András Schiff has been awarded the Robert Schumann Prize (2011), the Golden Mozart Medal (2012), and the Gold Medal of the London Royal Philharmonic Society (2013). In 2014, Queen Elizabeth II raised him to the peerage, and in 2018 he was made an honorary doctor of the Royal College of Music. He received the Bach Medal of the City of Leipzig in 2022 and the Salzburg Festival Pin with Rubies in 2023. His book Music Comes from Silence was published in 2017. Sir András Schiff has taken a stand against the alarming political developments in Hungary. In response to defamatory attacks by Hungarian nationalists, he no longer gives concerts in his homeland.
Lucerne Festival (IMF) debut on 21 August 1990 in a solo recital of works by Janáček, Bartók, Schubert, and Haydn.
July 2024