March 8, 2011
By Kevin Burns
Photo: Kata Schiller
Canada’s Alexander Seredenko and Hungary’s Adam Banda are pioneers in a new musical “exchange” program organized by Andrea Fellner and János Vecsernyés
Franz Liszt once described the role of the artist as “the bearer of the beautiful.” There’s a new exchange initiative designed to bring a new generation of “bearers of the beautiful” from Hungary to Canada, and from Canada to Hungary. This initiative involves young and highly talented musicians.
From Hungary to Canada
In the past few months, Ádám Banda, a talented young violin virtuoso from Budapest, has travelled to Toronto and Ottawa to give a series of concerts as the first step toward setting up a new partnership between young performers in Hungary and the Glenn Gould School at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music. Currently completing his doctorate at the acclaimed Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, the 25-year old Banda was singled out by the Academy’s president, Andras Batta, as “one of the most remarkable young artists to have entered the Franz Liszt Academy.” Banda was a mere 12-year old student when he began at the Academy.
Photo: Kata Schiller
As with most young musicians, international competitions are an important component of a performer’s career development. In 2001, Banda won the Liszt Academy’s Ferenc Halasz-Prize. In 2003 it was first prize at the Carl Flesch International Violin Competition and in 2005, the Dubai International Violin competition. In 2006 he won the jury’s special prize at Moscow’s Yampolsky International Violin Competition and the following year he won the Szigeti – Hubay International Violin Competition.
Following his recent Canadian performances Adam Banda has been offered a special one-year residency at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. And if all goes according to plan he will do just that.
Canada to Hungary
Photo: Bo Huang
Alexander Seredenko is one of Canada’s next generation of performing artists and is being primed for a major international concert and recording career. He started playing the piano at the age of 7 and received his Associate of the Royal Conservatory (Toronto) diploma by the time he was 14. Like Adam Banda, he must also find time to balance the demands of his continuing musical studies (in this case at the Glenn Gould School of Toronto’s Royal Conservatory), his concert engagements, as well as entering and (mostly winning) international competitions.
So far he has won the prestigious Ihnatowycz Piano Prize, was the first Canadian to receive the First Prize at the Hamamatsu International Piano Academy Competition in Japan, and before that was winner of the Grand Prizes for Solo and Concerto Performances at the World Piano Competition in Cincinnati, and the Second Prize and Special Award for Solo Performance at the Corpus Christi International Piano and Strings Competition. He followed these successes by winning the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s National Piano Competition in 2009, resulting in a performance of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No 1 with the Toronto Symphony under the direction of Peter Oundjian at Roy Thompson Hall last December.
Later this month, Seredenko is off to Hungary to perform a Shostakovich piano concerto with Budapest String’s Chamber Orchestra on March 27th in the Mirror Hall of the Festetics Palace in Budapest. Then he performs at the Budapest Spring Festival where he will give a solo piano recital in the Museum of Applied Arts on March 31st, 2011. After that he’s performing at the Györ Synagogue, which is Györ’s new concert hall, on April 3rd.
These international musical partnerships are the work – and passionate commitment to the arts – of Andrea Fellner and János Vecsernyés, two former executive producers from Hungarian Television and who now run an arts management company, Burbank Enterprises Inc. Fellner and Vecsernyés hope that these initial musical exchanges will lead to a much more extensive series of Canada/Hungary “beauty-bearing” partnerships in the years ahead.