Ferenc Rados

‘The pianist Ferenc Rados was born in 1934 in Budapest as son of the violinist and violin teacher Dezső Rados. The young Rados attended the Béla Bartók Specialist Music School as István Antal’s pupil between 1952 and 1956, and from the 1956/57 academic year till 1959 studied with Pál Kadosa at the Music Academy.

After his postgraduate studies at the Moscow State Conservatory with Viktor K. Meržanov he started his successful career as pianist in his homeland. Until 1985 he has given concerts all over the world, as soloist, as chamber musician and as guest of famous orchestras. His musical work has been documented with several CD recordings under the label of Hungaroton.

In 1964 Ferenc Rados began teaching, at first at the Béla Bartók Specialist Music School, and later at the Music Academy. Initially he worked as Pál Kadosa’s assistant, but eventually became a professor of piano and chamber music of legendary fame, whose teaching played a decisive role in the careers of a whole generation of musicians. Every one of our now world-famous pianists was his pupil, and many of the musicians who form the main body of Hungarian musical life attended his chamber music classes.

When he stopped giving public performances as a pianist at the end of the eighties he dedicated himself completely to the teaching of young musicians in Europe and Oversees.

Ferenc Rados has been rewarded in Hungary for several times and received the Hungarian State Award in 1980 and 2004, the Bartók-Pásztory Award in 1997 and the Kossuth Prize in 2010.