Klára Würtz

Klára Würtz has won the attention and adoration of audiences worldwide with her suggestive and sovereign performances. Her former teacher, Zoltán Kocsis described her as a "true phenomenon on stage". American critic Richard Dyer of the Boston Globe wrote of her: " Würtz played with exceptional beauty of tone, finesse of voicing and musical imagination. Passages in her Schumann interpretation were breathtaking, heartstopping in their candid intimacy. The unaffected, communicative warmth of her temperament recalled Annie Fischer".

Klára has an extensive discography with nearly 40 recordings with the Brilliant Classics and Piano Classics labels in the Netherlands. She has recorded solo, chamber music and orchestral concertos by Bartók, Schumann, Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Debussy, Janaćek, Kodály and Ravel, among others. The five albums with all of Mozart's piano sonatas have received a tremendous international response. Harris Goldsmith, America's leading critic, has praised her in length, writing "Her approach combines true sophistication and temperamental verve. Hers are in the best sense instinctual interpretations".

Following the success of these recordings, Klára was invited by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and made her debut at the Carnegie Hall in New York City under the baton of Bernard Haitink. She gave a solo recital at the Mozart Year in 2006 at the Salzburg Festival. Her complete recordings of Beethoven's violin and piano sonatas with violinist Kristóf Baráti was described by a leading German daily as a „reference recording”. Recorded as the member of the Klaviertrio Amsterdam, her Mendelssohn recording was the chamber recording of the year according to the American classical music magazine Fanfare.

As the winner of the Ettore Pozzoli International Piano Competition in Milan and a finalist at the Gpa International Piano Competition in Dublin, Klára quickly found her place on the world's stages. He has toured in Japan and has given hundreds of concerts in the United States, Mexico, Indonesia, China and many countries across Europe. The Great Hall of the Concertgebouw, the Bunka Kaikan in Tokyo, the Verdi Conservatory in Milan, the Palais de Beaux Artes in Brussels, the Carnegie Hall and Town Hall in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and the Liszt Academy in Budapest are important stages in her career.

Shee has toured the USA with the Czech Philharmonic under Jirzi Belohlavek and has worked with the Budapest Festival Orchestra under Iván Fischer, played at the Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra, the Slovák Sinfonietta, the Janaćek Filharmonia, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boulder Symphony, the Youth of the Nation, the Norddeutch Filharmonia, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, Cape Town Philharmonic ORchestra, Netherlands Symphony and Radio Symphony Orchestras, with conductors like Justus Franz, Marco Boni, Theodore Kuchar, Arie van Beek and Bruno Weil. She has performed at the prestigious Le Roque d'Antheron, Newport and the Ravinia Festival in Chicago. The Dutch TV station has made a portrait film about her titled Piano, which is available on YouTube.

She is also active as a chamber musician. Her partners have included Janine Jansen, Kristóf Baráti, Dmtri Makhtin, Emmy Verhey, Pieter Wispelwey, Alexander Kniazev, István Várdai, Timora Rosler, the Amsterdam Piano Trio, Pavel Haas, the Párkányi and the Daniel String Quartets.

Born into a family of artists in Budapest, Klára's childhood was defined by music and in particular, singing. She was an active, touring member and instrumental soloist of the Children's Choir of the Hungarian Radio and Television. It was here that she started playing the piano with Irén Magyarné Szalai at the age of 6. She made her debut as an instrumental soloist at the age of 10 at a 72-stop concert tour of Japan.

At 14, she studied at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music as a student of the special talents class under Klára Máthé and Zsuzsa Esztó. From 1982, she continued her studies under the guidance of Pál Kadosa, Zoltán Kocsis, Ferenc Rados and György Kurtág.

She was awarded the András Schiff scholarship in England several times, where she attended chamber music masterclasses. She has graduated with honours as an artist and teacher in Budapest in 1989. Since 1990 she has lived in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She teaches piano and chamber music at the Utrecht Conservatory of Music.