He was born in the United States and lives there, but speaks perfect Hungarian and has been drawn to Bartók’s music since the very beginning. Peter Klimo took the stage with Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3 at the orchestral finals of the Bartók World Competition.

At 21, Ádám Balogh has already been a prize winner at a number of international piano competitions and a guest soloist with acclaimed orchestras. He first appeared with the Budapest Festival Orchestra in 2010. The youngest competitor in the Bartók World Competition, he played Liszt’s Concerto for Piano in A Major in the orchestral finals.

Ádám Zsolt Szokolay played Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 1 at the orchestral grand final of the Bartók World Competition and was later declared the winner at the gala evening. After the awards ceremony, he said he had managed to put all his ideas into practice at the competition and felt that the firm focus he experienced there would assist him in his career. At present, he is in the process of honing his skills as a student at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt in Weimar and is convinced that Bartók’s music demands an open-hearted approach.

Ádám Szokolay, 23, has clinched first place at the 2019 Bartók World Competition, organised by the Academy of Music for pianists this year. At the gala evening held on 15 September, second place went to Ádám Balogh, while Peter Klimo came in third.

Liszt Prize-winning pianist Kálmán Dráfi believes that anyone who can give an excellent performance of Bartók can play almost anything else and that therefore one of the greatest geniuses of the 20th century ought to receive a higher stature in the repertoires of Hungarian pianists. A department head at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music, Dráfi is a member of the jury for the Bartók World Competition, which is expected to decide late Saturday night who wins this year’s piano category.