László Borbély Piano Recital Presented by Liszt Academy

László Borbély, a pianist and recipient of the Junior Prima and Artisjus Prizes, is one of the most versatile artists of his generation. He has performed in many countries around the world, and in 2022, audiences were able to hear him play on the stage of Carnegie Hall. His discography – which now includes more than twenty solo albums – features some of the most complex works in music history. His Chopin album Secrets, most recently won the NativeDSD “Album of the Year 2025” award.

The first half of the concert features two sets of piano pieces by Austrian composers, written just over eighty years apart. Franz Schubert’s Three Piano Pieces embody the composer’s unique stylistic hallmarks; though composed in 1828 – the final year of his life – they were only published forty years later under the editorship of Johannes Brahms. These are paired with Arnold Schoenberg’s expressive “cycle” of the same name from 1909, a work that represents the threshold of atonality in his oeuvre. The neutral, non-associative title clearly signals the 20th-century avant-garde’s desire to distance itself from the traditions of program music.

The second half of the evening is dedicated to Robert Schumann’s Fantasie in C major. Schumann originally began the work to aid in the fundraising for a monument to Beethoven in Bonn. Fittingly, the piece was later dedicated to Ferenc Liszt, who not only provided the largest single donation for the statue but was also a tireless champion of Schumann’s music.