Artist database

4 October 1930 Sopron - 24 April 2021

Kossuth Prize winner composer, university teacher, founding member of the Széchenyi Academy of Letters and Arts.

He started to play the piano in the music school of his hometown when he was six. He also completed secondary school there, in the Széchenyi Grammar School. In 1949 he was accepted to the Ferenc Liszt Music Academy of Budapest, where he learned in the class of János Viski. He graduated in 1956.

From 1957 on, he’s been teacher of music theory and composing for fifteen years in the Béla Bartók Secondary School for Music. Since 1962 he’s been giving lectures at the Music Academy. In 1968 he became reader there and since 1974 he’s been university teacher of the Academy. During these years he taught counterpoint, transpose-score reading and composing. From 1988 to 1994 he was rector of the Ferenc Liszt Music Academy, and at the moment he is professor emeritus there.

Major works: two operas [Antigone (three acts), Golden shot (one act)], six symphonies, Comments on a Händel-theme, Three Orchestral Pieces, Violin concertos, three piano concertos, two cello concertos, Oboe concerto, two chamber concerts, twenty piano sonatas, Notes for piano (four booklets), twelve string quartets and the Wind quintet. A number of songs to poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, Georg Trackl, Paul Verlaine, Miklós Radnóti, László Lator, etc. Countless a capella and accompanied choral works, Magnificat, Te Deum and Requiem.

His achievements were honored with the Erkel Prize (1974), the titles Merited Artist (1981) and Excellent Artist (1990), the Bartók-Pásztory Award (2002), the Kossuth and the Péter Pázmány Prize (1999), as well as with the Artisjus Prize. In 1992 he took part in the establishment of the Széchenyi Academy of Letters and Arts, he held his inaugural speech in February, 1999. József Soproni is fellow citizen of Sopron, city of county ranks.

His work "9 Songs on Poems by György Czigány" was the winner of the Artisjus Prize "Classical Composition of the Year 2021".