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Born in the city of Pécs on August 5, 1953, Ligeti can hardly remember a time when music was not at the center of his life. His father, himself a musician, started the 5-year-old András on violin. In 1970 these studies continued at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, where he received a diploma as a violinist in 1977. There he took an especial interest in contemporary music. In 1974 he was admitted to the conducting department, where he was a student of András Kórodi. He was awarded a conducting diploma in 1979. Ligeti�s career began in 1977 as the concertmaster of the State Opera House in Budapest. He soon became a conductor there, holding that position from 1981-5. During this period he won first prizes for his violin playing at competitions, such as the Weiner Competition in Budapest (1975) and the Sonata Competition at Indiana University in the USA (1980). Further studies took him to the Music College of Vienna as a Solti scholar student of Karl Österreicher (1980). In 1986 he was the assistant of Claudio Abbado with the Mahler Youth Orchestra.
In 1985 Ligeti became conductor of one of Hungary�s leading symphonic ensembles, the Hungarian Radio Orchestra, and was its principal conductor from 1990 to 1993. But his successes have not been limited to his home country. Ligeti has also appeared with the philharmonic orchestras of Dresden, Dortmund, Stuttgart, the Radio Orchestra of Berlin and the Symphony Orchestra of Berlin. He has conducted orchestras in Bergen, Oslo, Madrid, Taipei, Sapporo, Nagoya, Kanazawa and Israel. Other engagements have been with the Suisse Romande, the Festival Orchestra of Toronto, the Nouvelle Orchestre de Paris, the Santa Cecilia of Rome, the Japanese Chamber Orchestra, the Webern Ensemble of Vienna and the Philharmonics of Seoul and the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra. In the British Isles he has led the BBC Philharmonic, as well as the BBC orchestras of London, Scotland, Belfast and Dublin.
From 1998 to 1999 he was the permanent conductor of Opera North in Leeds, and since January 2001 he has been the principal guest conductor of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. He has made numerous recordings for the Hungarian Radio, Hungaroton, NAXOS and Conifer as well as other labels. He has been awarded several times with Hungary�s most prestigious forms of recognition in the field of music, he got the Liszt Award (1988), Bartók-Pásztory Prize twice (1988, 2001), and also received the title Merited Artist recently in 2002. András Ligeti is currently music director of the Hungarian Symphony Orchestra, Matáv in Budapest, a post he has held since February 1997. In this short time he has developed that orchestra into a vibrant, exciting group that excels in the Romantic and Modern repertory. Though his repertory stretches from the late Baroque, up through contemporary Hungarian works, András Ligeti feels closest to the music of Mahler and Brahms, Stravinsky and Bartók.

In 2007 he was awarded the Kossuth Prize.

Current performances of András Ligeti
Koncertkalendárium (www.muzsikalendarium.hu)