Dénes Várjon

Dénes Várjon, piano (Csömör, Hungary), works regularly with Steven Isserlis, Tabea Zimmermann, Kim Kashkashian, Jörg Widmann, Leonidas Kavakos, András Schiff, Heinz Holliger, Miklós Perényi, and Joshua Bell. As a soloist he has appeared in major concert series, from New York’s Carnegie Hall and Vienna’s Konzerthaus to London’s Wigmore Hall. He is frequently invited to work with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, Tonhalle Orchestra, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Russian National Orchestra, Kremerata Baltica, and Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. Among the conductors he has worked are Sir Georg Solti, Sándor Végh, Iván Fischer, Ádám Fischer, Heinz Holliger, Horst Stein, Leopold Hager, and Zoltán Kocsis. Dénes appears regularly at leading international festivals including Marlboro, Salzburg, and Edinburgh. He also performs four hands and two piano recitals frequently with his wife Izabella Simon, and in the past decade the two have organized and led several chamber music festivals, the most recent being „kamara.hu” at the Franz Liszt Music Academy in Budapest. Dénes has also built a close partnership with Alfred Brendel; their Liszt project was presented in the UK and Italy. His recordings for the Naxos, Capriccio, PAN-Classics Switzerland, Teldec and Hungaroton labels have been met with critical acclaim, and in 2015 he recorded the Schumann piano concerto with the WDR Symphonieorchester and Heinz 1 Holliger, and all five Beethoven piano concertos with Concerto Budapest and András Keller. Dénes graduated from the Franz Liszt Music Academy in 1991, where his professors included Sándor Falvai, György Kurtág and Ferenc Rados. He was the first prize winner at the Hungarian Radio Piano Competition, Leó Weiner Chamber Music Competition, and Géza Anda Competition, and was awarded the Liszt, Sándor Veress and Bartók-Pásztory prizes. In 2020 he received Hungary’s supreme cultural award, the Kossuth Prize. Dénes also works for Henle’s Urtext Editions.