Dénes Várjon

Born in Budapest in 1968, Dénes Várjon graduated from the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in 1991, where he studied with Sándor Falvai, György Kurtág and Ferenc Rados. In younger years, he also took part in international masterclasses with Sir András Schiff in parallel to his studies. After winning the Leó Weiner Chamber Music Competition in Budapest and Hungarian Radio’s National Piano Competition, in 1991 he won first prize in the Concours Géza Anda in Zurich. Subsequently, in 1997, he received the Franz Liszt Prize, the Sándor Veress Prize and the Bartók-Pásztory Award from the Hungarian government.

His exceptional technical ability, deep musicality and his wide-ranging musical interests make Dénes Várjon one of the most exciting and best respected Hungarian pianists of his generation. His universal musical talent is evident in his work as an excellent soloist, first-class chamber musician, artistic director of festivals and extremely popular piano teacher.

Dénes Várjon is always a welcome guest in major concert halls, such as New York’s Carnegie Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall and Wiener Konzerthaus. He has performed as a soloist on many occasions with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and with Kremerata Baltica. His festival appearances have also included the Salzburg Festival, the Davos Festival, Ruhr Piano Festival, Sir András Schiff’s Ittingen Whitsun concerts and the Piano Festival in Lucerne.

Chamber music plays a particularly important role in Dénes Várjon’s musical life, and he regularly meets with chamber music partners such as Sir András Schiff, Steven Isserlis, Heinz Holliger, Tabea Zimmermann, Joshua Bell and Leonidas Kavakos.

Sir Georg Solti, Sándor Végh, Iván Fischer, Ádám Fischer, Leopold Hager and Zoltán Kocsis are among the conductors he has worked with. Together with his wife, Izabella Simon, he not only performs in a piano duo but also jointly organises and directs several chamber music festivals, most recently the Kamara.hu Festival at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest in 2018. The pianist has an extensive discography with the Naxos, Capriccio, Hungaroton, ECM, Sony Classical and Hyperion labels.

Dénes Várjon teaches at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest and since 2019 has been artistic director of its “Complete Works Live” series featuring the piano chamber music of Robert Schumann. Since 2018, he additionally teaches at Kronberg Academy.