Zsuzsanna Sirokay (born 28 March 1941 in Ungvár) is a Hungarian pianist. She has lived in Switzerland since 1968 and became a Swiss citizen in 1983.
Life and work
After her family fled frontline battles in her native town, she spent her childhood in Gyoma, a village in the Hungarian lowlands. From the age of ten to 17, she attended the conservatory in Debrecen. Then she moved to Budapest and began to study piano at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music. She completed her studies with Péter Solymos in 1963 with Honours.
Alongside studying with György Kurtág, she attended masterclasses with Alfred Brendel, Paul Badura-Skoda, Jörg Demus and Géza Anda.
She made her orchestral debut with Schumann’s Piano Concerto in 1965 with the Hungarian State Orchestra under the direction of János Ferencsik. With the same orchestra under the direction of Tamás Breitner she also made her record debut under the Hungaroton label, a recording of the piano concertos in A major, K. 488, and C major, K. 415, by W. A. Mozart.
Over the course of her career she worked with conductors such as István Kertész, Charles Dutoit, Sándor Végh, Armin Jordan, Zoltán Pesko, Gerd Albrecht, Tamás Sulyok and Marie-Jeanne Dufour, and orchestras such as the BBC Scottish Symphony, the Bamberg Symphony, the Collegium Musicum Zurich founded by Paul Sacher and the Southwest German Philharmonic.
She has regularly performed chamber music with artists such as Peter-Lukas Graf, Nicolas Chumachenco, H. R. Stalder, Brenton Langbein and Hansheinz Schneeberger, as well as with ensembles such as the Zurich Chamber Musicians, the Tátrai Quartet, the Bartók Quartet, the New Zurich Quartet and the Carmina Quartet. This collaboration has also resulted in various recordings, mostly on the Swiss classical label Claves.
She has taken part in festivals and masterclasses such as the Cheltenham Music Festival, Wexford Festival Opera and the Academia Musicae Pro Mundo Uno in Assisi. At the invitation of Sándor Végh, she participated in the IMS Prussia Cove in Cornwall.
Concert tours have taken her to Hungary and Switzerland as well as numerous European countries (England, Germany, Ireland, Holland, Sweden, Austria, Italy, the former Czechoslovakia, Poland, the former Soviet Union and Spain). She has also made radio recordings for Swiss Radio (Basel, Bern, Lausanne, Lugano, Zurich) as well as for broadcasters in Berlin, Budapest, Glasgow, Cologne, London, Stuttgart and Vienna.
She was a lecturer at the Hochschule Freiburg in Breisgau, gave various masterclasses (Ticino Musica / Ascona, Musica Riva / Riva del Garda, Academia Musicae Pro Mundo Uno / Assisi) and was a state music expert at the Conservatory and the Musikhochschule Zürich and at the Winterthur Conservatory as well as a jury member at the Scottish International Piano Competition in Glasgow (1989 & 1995).
Due to increasing health problems with her hands and operations, she decided to retire from performing at the beginning of the 2000s.
Awards and honours
- Finalist at the International Clara Haskil Piano Competition in Lucerne in 1967 and 1969
- Prizewinner at competitions in Vienna and at the Leeds International Piano Competition
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