Eszter Karasszon

Eszter Karasszon’s career as a cellist has already taken her all around the world. Despite her young age, not only has she given concerts in numerous European countries – including The Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Italy and Switzerland – but has also performed in China, Israel and the United States. At eight years old she won a prize, as the youngest competitor, at her first national cello competition, and since then she’s been among the prize-winners at many Hungarian and international competitions, with her most recent triumph in 2015 at the David Popper International Cello Competition. In 2016 she graduated with honours from the Liszt Academy of Music. Alongside her solo career, Eszter Karasszon has also had a number of chamber music successes, and in 2013 her ensemble took the Ernő Dohányi Chamber Music Competition by storm. She doesn’t see chamber and solo playing as two distinctly separate areas of her life, however, as for her “all music is chamber music”. She regularly plays with Vilmos Szabadi, with whom she travelled to China for a tour, and recently they gave a concert together in New York. Lately she’s been exploring Shostakovich’s music in greater depth, and she played the composer’s Cello Concerto No. 1 at her diploma concert in the Large Hall of the Liszt Academy. The works of 20^th-century and contemporary Hungarian composers – Kodály, Bartók, Dohnányi, Vajda, Gárdonyi – hold a prominent place in her repertoire. She’s drawn to any situation in which she can demystify classical music, making it more accessible to people. Her credo is that Good music shouldn’t be confined to the concert hall, it deserves to be everywhere.