Gábor Farkas

Gábor Farkas began his musical training at five, born in 1981, and apart from a period in Italy he absorbed Hungary’s distinctive pedagogical lineage rather than the cross-border formation typical of many pianists who reach global stages. He entered the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest, an institution whose origins trace to Franz Liszt’s own era, and completed his undergraduate studies there in 2005 before returning for a doctorate under Zoltán Kocsis, awarded in 2014.

His competitive successes began early. In 2000 he claimed first prize at the Béla Bartók Piano Competition held in the Austrian spa town of Baden bei Wien, then added the Hungarian National Radio Piano Competition title in 2003. Subsequent honors included Hungary’s young-artist-of-the-year distinction in 2008, the Gundel Art Prize in 2009, and, most notably, the Franz Liszt Award—Hungary’s highest state arts prize—in 2012. By then his recital schedule had expanded across Europe, encompassing a Berlin appearance at the Konzerthaus, and into Asia with performances in Beijing, Seoul, Shanghai, and Tokyo’s Bunka Kaikan.

Farkas’s first commercial release, An Evening with Liszt, appeared on Warner Classics in 2008 and received the Franz Liszt International Society’s accolade for the year’s outstanding Liszt recording; a live album followed. He has also documented repertoire for the Brilliant and Hungaroton labels. In 2015 he secured an engagement through an audition competition organized by New York Concert Artists & Associates, which opened doors to American audiences. The resulting activity produced a Carnegie Hall debut in 2016 and a Steinway & Sons album, Liszt: Opera and Song for Solo Piano, devoted to the composer’s keyboard transcriptions of his own vocal and operatic works.