Professor Szabolcs Esztényi

Com­poser, pianist, impro­viser and teacher of Hun­gar­ian ori­gin. He was born in Budapest on 20^th Decem­ber 1939. He has lived in Poland since 1969. He stud­ied the piano in Margerita Trombini-Kazuro’s class and com­po­si­tion in Witold Rudziński’s class (both diplo­mas magna cum laude) at the State Higher School of Music in Warsaw.

He has per­formed as a com­poser and soloist in Poland and abroad, tak­ing part in many fes­ti­vals (e.g., War­saw Autumn, Poz­nań Musi­cal Spring, War­saw Music Meet­ings, “Musica Polonica Nova” in Wrocław, Łańcut Fes­ti­val, the Witold Lutosławski Forum, the Fes­ti­val of Pol­ish Piano Music in Słupsk, Zagreb Bien­nale, Budapesti Zenei Hetek, Donaueschinger Musik­tage, the Bergamo-Brescia Piano Fes­ti­val, Fes­ti­val d’été de Lanaudière in Que­bec, Nordiskie Musikdage, Recon­tres Inter­na­tionales de Musique Con­tem­po­raine Metz).

He has col­lab­o­rated with many renowned per­form­ing artists includ­ing Jerzy Artysz, Andrzej Hiol­ski, Heinz Hollinger, Roman Jabłoński, Jad­wiga Kot­nowska, the Wilanów Quar­tet, Halina Łukom­ska, Olga Pasiecznik, Jad­wiga Rappé, Zyg­munt Krauze’s Musi­cal Work­shop, Jerzy Witkowski, Iwona Miro­niuk. He has given many first per­for­mances of works by Pol­ish com­posers (e.g., Kaz­imierz Serocki’s Piano­phonie, Rafał Augustyniak’s Vari­a­tions on Paganini) as well as library record­ings for Pol­ish Radio. He has col­lab­o­rated for many years with Fer­enc Lan­tos and Mária Apagyi, authors of cre­ative musical-visual ped­a­gogy, and with the founders of the Free Artis­tic School in Pécs, Hungary.

Pro­fes­sor Szabolcs Esztényi has taught piano impro­vi­sa­tion at the Fry­deryk Chopin Sec­ondary Music School in War­saw and the War­saw and Łódź Music Acad­e­mies. Pol­ish aca­d­e­mic cen­tres (Białys­tok, Byd­goszcz, Cieszyn, Gdańsk, Katow­ice, Kraków, Poz­nań, Wrocław) as well as sev­eral Hun­gar­ian insti­tu­tions (the Fer­enc Liszt Acad­emy of Music in Budapest, the Depart­ment of Instru­men­tal Edu­ca­tion at the Debre­cen Acad­emy, Pécs Uni­ver­sity, Pécs Edu­ca­tion Cen­tre) reg­u­larly invite him to give illus­trated lec­tures on cre­ative music edu­ca­tion and teach­ing impro­vi­sa­tion. He takes part in piano impro­vi­sa­tion courses for stu­dents and teach­ers of pri­mary and sec­ondary artis­tic schools. He has been lec­tur­ing and con­duct­ing work­shops on piano impro­vi­sa­tion at the Sum­mer Mas­ter courses in Con­tem­po­rary Piano and Vocal Music in Bystrzyca Kłodzka since 1996.

Szabolcs Esztényi won First Prize at the Pol­ish National Piano Impro­vi­sa­tion Com­pe­ti­tion in 1968. He was awarded a medal for the pop­u­lar­i­sa­tion of con­tem­po­rary Pol­ish music by the Pol­ish Com­posers’ Asso­ci­a­tion in 1988 and he received the “Orpheus” award for his ren­der­ing of Tomasz Sikorski’s com­po­si­tions at the 32^nd Inter­na­tional Con­tem­po­rary Music Fes­ti­val “War­saw Autumn” by the Crit­ics’ Sec­tion of the Pol­ish Musi­cians’ Asso­ci­a­tion in 1989. In 1993 he was awarded the annual Pol­ish Com­posers’ Asso­ci­a­tion Award.

He has been Pro­fes­sor of Musi­cal Arts since 1998.