Barnabás Kelemen
Barnabás Kelemen is a Hungarian violinist, chamber musician, and professor. He is the founder and artistic director of the Festival Academy Budapest and he co-established the Kelemen Quartet. His work has been recognized with the highest professional and state honors: he has been awarded Liszt, Bartók-Pásztory and Kossuth Prizes, Prima and the London-based Gramophone Awards, and is the holder of the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary.
Early life and education
Kelemen began studying the violin under Valéria Baranyai. As a student of Eszter Perényi, he graduated from the Liszt Academy of Music in 2001. He was enormously influenced by his later masters, Isaac Stern, Ferenc Rados, and Zoltán Kocsis, and by the several recordings and movie films of his grandfather from the 1930s. He studied conducting from two legends of the Finnish school, Leif Segerstam and Jorma Panula.Career
Barnabás Kelemen has established himself as one of the leading and most versatile artist of his generation.An artist of “innate musicality” with a technical execution that belongs “only to the greatest”
“...a penchant for fiery display and a lyricism suited to the stage, Barnabás Kelemen Hungarian soloist met the composer's demands unflappably, stirring a rousing ovation” as the soloist of the American Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium.”
Conquering the most famous concert halls in the world with his dynamic and passionate performances with his open-minded and individual playing he is an outstanding soloist chamber musician and conductor. As well he has been artistic director of festivals and professor at renowned institutions. In recent years he has been invited more and more as a jury member at world's leading violin and chamber music contests.
Due to his exceptional style sensitivity and his comprehensive technical proficiency, Barnabás Kelemen navigates with confidence through the entire catalogue of music written for violin. His repertoire is thus extremely diverse from solo, concerto, chamber music to string quartet works and he performs with incredible authenticity from early baroque, through classical, and romantic to contemporary music, with world- or Hungarian premieres of works by Kurtág, Ligeti, Schnittke, Gubajdulina, Steve Reich or Ryan Wigglesworth.
He regularly performs at the world's most prominent concert venues, including the Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw, the Royal Festival Hall, the Palais de Beaux Arts, the Suntory Hall, the Musikverein or the Berliner Philharmonie. He is a frequent guest of such eminent ensembles as the BBC Symphony, the London Philharmonic- and Symphony orchestras, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Berlin Radio Symphony, Hannover's NDR Radiophilharmonie, the Munich Symphony Orchestra, the Budapest Festival Orchestra or the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra, the Estonian National Philharmonic Orchestra or the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra to name but a few.
Barnabás Kelemen has worked with conductors such as Lorin Maazel, Sir Neville Marriner, Vladimir Jurowski, Marek Janowski, Michael Stern, Krzysztof Urbanski, Zoltán Kocsis, Péter Eötvös, Iván Fischer... He is also an avid conductor himself – in recent seasons he has led the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Austro- Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, the Dohnányi Symphony, the Israel Chamber Orchestra or the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra etc.
He is a professor at two illustrious institutions: at the Ferenc Liszt Academy in Budapest where he coaches chamber music groups at regular masterclasses and teaches violin at the University of Cologne.
Chamber Musician
On top of all Barnabás Kelemen is a passionate chamber musician who has been playing regularly together with artists like Zoltán Kocsis, Joshua Bell, Schlomo Mintz, Miklós Perényi, Ferenc Rados, Maxim Rysanov, Steven Isserlis, Alina Ibragimova, Nicolas Altstaedt, Vilde Frang, José Gallardo or Andreas Ottensamer at chamber music festivals such as: Edinburgh, Jerusalem, Prussia Cove, Salzburg, Graz, Delft, Lockenhaus, Mondsee, Mantova, Kuhmo etc.Recordings
It was him who recorded all of Bartók's works for violin in the Bartók New Series under the aegis of Zoltán Kocsis, and many received international acclaim, especially his CD comprising the complete sonatas for violin which won the prestigious Gramophone Award in 2013. In 2001, his album of Liszt's complete works for violin and piano was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque by the International Liszt Society, while in 2003, Diapason magazine paid tribute to Kelemen and Tamás Vásáry's recording of Brahms’ Sonatas for Violin and Piano with its influential Diapason d’Or. So far, he has released a total of 22 albums – 19 solo/chamber music and three with his quartet – as well as a double DVD of live performances of Mozart's complete violin concertos. His album - released in 2019 under the care of Alpha Records - featuring Béla Bartók's Piano Quintet won its category at the BBC Music Magazine Awards and the Gramophone Award in 2020.Pedagogue
A devoted pedagogue since 2003 he is active as a violin and chamber music teacher giving masterclasses world-wide. Since 2003 he had been professor of violin later chamber music at the Ferenc Liszt Music Academy in Budapest and worked as a regular guest professor at the Indiana University in Bloomington/USA. Since 2013 he is a violin professor at the Cologne University in Germany as a successor of Zakhar Bronn and Viktor Tretyakov. He has been giving masterclasses at renowned institutions like Salzburg Mozarteum, Brussels Chapelle Rheine Elizabeth and at universities of Tokyo, Paris, Glasgow, Dallas, Toronto, Helsinki, Antwerpen, Brussels, Florance etc.Barnabás Kelemen has been invited as jury member to prestigious international violin and chamber music/string quartet competitions like: Singapore, Wieniawsky, Szigeti, Kloster Schöntaal, Bartók, or Banff. He himself established two international violin competitions one in 2017 for violinists under age 21 during the Festival Academy Budapest named after Ilona Fehér with jury president Shlomo Mintz and a Central- European violin competition since 2020 in Miskolc named after Jenő Hubay with jury president
Boris Kuschnir.