Noted pianist Bela Boszormenyi–Nagy

SBC

10/16/2025

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A former student of noted pianist Bela Boszormenyi–Nagy, he was a talented Hungarian-born pianist, who combined distinguished careers in both piano teaching and performance since his arrival in America. I am fortunate to have had such a wonderful teacher, who influences a lot of what I think about playing piano, and how I teach.

A winner of the coveted Liszt Prize for three consecutive years, his first teaching assignment was at the Liszt Academy. After 9 successful years there, Dr. Nagy accepted a position at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto, Canada. Artist in Residence and Professor of Piano at Indiana University, Boston University, North Carolina School for the Arts, and The Catholic University of America.

Noted pianist Béla Böszörményi-Nagy

Noted pianist Bela Boszormenyi-Nagy

Bela Boszormenyi Nagy was one of the most important members of the generation of pianists after Bartók and Dohnányi. Bela studied piano with Ernö Dohnányi, attended Leo Weiner's classes in chamber music and Zoltán Kodály's composition classes. He gave the Budapest premier of Bartók's Third Piano Concerto, and won the coveted Liszt Prize for three consecutive years.

Piano Performer

Piano Teacher

Noted pianist Béla Böszörményi-Nagy was one of the most important members of the generation of pianists after Bartók and Dohnányi.

Noted performer and pianist

Noted pianist Bela Boszormenyi-Nagy

Piano Performer

Piano Teacher

Béla Böszörményi-Nagy was one of the most important members of the generation of pianists after Bartók and Dohnányi. Born in 1912 in Sátoraljaújhely, Hungary, one of his first teachers was István Thoman. He went on to study piano with Ernö Dohnányi, while also regularly attending Leo Weiner's classes in chamber music and Zoltán Kodály's composition classes. From 1935 for three years he received a Liszt scholarship. In 1937 he received his piano artist's diploma, simultaneously graduating at Szeged as well.

"He was an excellent pedagogue, but at the same time an artist through and through. We experienced in his classes the best: he filled room XVI of the Music Academy with music. It was difficult to get close to this rather reserved personality, but when we sat down at the piano, and he sensed talent in someone, he practically swept that person into the music: he whistled, conducted, played the piano, he made us fly. What we received in these classes, we received for a lifetime."

—One-time student, pianist Zsuzsa Szabó

Bartók and Dohnányi

Bela gave the Budapest premier of Bartók's Third Piano Concerto, as well as the original or European premieres of many contemporary compositions. His unusually wide repertoire included sixty concertos, as well as almost all the solo works of Johann Sebastian Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Brahms, Debussy, Ravel, Bartók, Kodály, Stravinsky, Boulez, and Stockhausen.

Nagy plays Beethoven

His Beethoven concerts are particularly memorable and one of his many very positive reviews were by Dénes Bartha, written in April 1942, below.

Émile Jaques-Dalcroze

Movements can range from the rolling of a ball from one person to another while seated on the floor, or walking and using assorted arm motions. View an example of Eurythmics with the following link for Internationally renowned teacher Lisa Parker.

With a focus on rhythmic musical expression, Eurythmics encourages a student to experience rhythm, and express that understanding through improvised movements of his body. A student learns to simultaneously hear, understand and express the musical idea through motion. So the body interprets and expresses musical elements, such as rhythm, in real-time. Music becomes a full-body experience. The student can then apply their experience of musical concepts to their piano playing. A group approach to music study.

The understanding of any one element, such as rhythm, is then expressed in physical movement.

With a focus on rhythmic musical expression, Eurythmics encourages a student to experience rhythm, and express that understanding through improvised movements of his body. A student learns to simultaneously hear, understand and express the musical idea through motion. So the body interprets and expresses musical elements, such as rhythm, in real-time. Music becomes a full-body experience. The student can then apply their experience of musical concepts to their piano playing. A group approach to music study.

The Dalcroze Practice Take a deeper dive into the principles, philosophy, strategies, and techniques of Dalcroze Education indicated on their website. "Typically the Dalcroze educator engages students to discover concepts through kinesthetic experience before addressing the subject in theoretical or written form. This experience involves improvisation, which is a way for students to “play with” and internalize a subject, making it their own. Students cannot expect to gain a Dalcroze Education from a book or video alone; they must experience this type of education in the classroom."

"This serious young man subjects his personal ambitions to the service of the composition, the highest goal of all performing art, more so than any other of the current pianists. Besides this, he has an absolutely individual, sharply delineated personality, a fortunate mixture of being emphatically drawn to intellectual profundity, accompanied by a stormy, eruptive temperament. All this makes him an excellent Beethoven performer, what is more, the best in Hungary. In order to become an artist of world stature, however, he shall have to tame his tremendous temperament and further develop his sense of tone. But the vast advance that he has already accomplished, from his first pianistic steps to the heights he has already reached, entitles us to high hopes – to hope that Béla Böszörményi-Nagy will one day continue that classically stressed way of playing Beethoven which is Bartók's orphaned intellectual legacy since the great master settled in America.

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