Valentin Magyar

Junior Prima award winner Valentin Magyar began his musical studies in 2006 at the Rózsavölgyi Márk Rózsavölgyi Elementary School of Arts in Balassagyarmat, under the guidance of Ildikó Somogyvári. He achieved his first professional success in 2013 at the XIII National Piano Competition in Nyíregyháza, where he was awarded first prize.From 2013 to 2015 he studied at the Tóth Aladár Music School in Budapest with Liszt Prize-winning pianist Gábor Eckhardt Eckhardt, and in 2015 he was accepted to the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music's School for Extraordinary Talents. Her teachers here were Gábor Eckhardt, Imre Hargitai and Rita Wágner.

He is a returning participant of the courses of Gábor Takács-Nagy, Ian Fountain and Zoltán Fejérvári, as well as of the international music camp Music Without Borders in Balassagyarmat, the Bozsok Music Festival and Kaposfest. He regularly collaborates with several orchestras, such as the Liszt Ferenc Chamber Orchestra.

He is a regular performer on national and international stages (BMC, Liszt Academy, MÜPA, Pesti Vigadó, Klebersberg Kultúrkúria, Jókai Anna Salon, National Theatre, Hungarian Cultural Institute in Vienna and Belgrade).

In June 2018, he premiered Mozart's Piano Concerto in D minor with the chamber orchestra Anima Musicae in the Great Hall of the Liszt Academy, for which he wrote his own cadenzas. In June 2019, he performed Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto on a Theme of Paganini, conducted by Gábor Horváth and accompanied by the Zugló Philharmonic Orchestra, in the Pesti Vigadó concert hall. In February 2021, he gave a joint concert with the Liszt Ferenc Chamber Orchestra and István Várdai, which included Bach's Piano Concerto in F minor.

Valentin Magyar has won prizes at several international piano competitions. In 2016 he won the silver medal in his age group at the 3rd Aci Bertoncelj International Piano Competition in Velenje (Slovenia), in 2017 he was awarded 2nd prize at the 5th Béla Bartók International Piano Competition in Graz (Austria) and the special prize for the best interpretation of a Bartók work. In February 2020, he won the Yamaha Scholarship as the winner of the Yamaha Instrumental Competition. In October 2020, he was awarded 1st prize in the online music competition organized by HCC New York. This year he won a gold medal in the instrumental soloist category at the Vienna International Music Competition for 21-23 year olds.

In 2017, he competed in the Virtuosi's Serious Music Talent Competition, where he reached the semi-finals.

Since 2019, he has been participating in the mentoring programme of the Chamber Academy Association, where he has been working in long-term collaboration with pianist Zoltán Fejérvári, cellist István Várdai, violinist Kristóf Baráti, violist Máté Szűcs and flutist Balázs Hornyák.