Géza Anda

Géza Anda (; 19 November 192113 June 1976) was a Swiss-Hungarian pianist. A celebrated interpreter of classical and romantic repertoire, particularly for performances and recordings of Mozart, he was also acclaimed as an interpreter of Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms and Bartók and admired for his technique. Most of his recordings were made on the Deutsche Grammophon label.

Early years and education Géza Anda was born in 1921 in Budapest. He studied with Imre Stefaniai and Imre Keéri-Szántó, then became a pupil of Ernst von Dohnányi and Zoltán Kodály at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest. In 1940 he won the Liszt Prize, and in the next year, he made an international name for himself with his performance of Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 2. He was regarded as the principal Bartók interpreter of his generation, even if other pianists since his death have made more obviously exciting recordings of that composer's concertos(according to whom?). Although he played very little Mozart in his early career, he became the first pianist to record the full cycle of Mozart's piano concerti; he recorded them between 1961 and 1969, conducting the orchestra from the keyboard.

His performance of the Andante from Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 in C on the soundtrack of the 1967 film Elvira Madigan led to the epithet "Elvira Madigan" often being applied to the concerto. For his recording of Mozart's Piano Concertos No. 17 and No. 21 with the Camerata Academica Salzburg, he received the Grand Prix du Disque in 1963. His album, Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 17 & 21, peaked at No. 115 on the US Billboard Top LPs during a seventeen-week run on the chart in 1968.

"From the outset of his career, he was what one might call a philosopher-virtuoso. In his lifelong quest for the perfect balance of head and heart, between intellect and instinct, he explored many facets of music-making." Claudio Abbado, Ernest Ansermet, Sir John Barbirolli, Karl Böhm, Ernest Bour, Eugen Jochum, Herbert von Karajan, Joseph Keilberth, István Kertész, Otto Klemperer, Rafael Kubelík, Ferdinand Leitner, Erich Leinsdorf, Fritz Reiner, Hans Rosbaud, Sir Malcolm Sargent, Carl Schuricht, Sir Georg Solti and George Szell.

Personal life Initially, Anda married Swiss-born Helene Winterstein-Bosshard (1906-1982), who was his manager. In 1964, he married Hortense Bührle, who was the youngest child of German-born industrialist and majority owner of Oerlikon-Bührle Emil Bührle. They have one son, Gratian Dietrich Bela Anda known as Gratian Anda (born 1969).

Géza Anda died on 13 June 1976 in Zurich, Switzerland. His cause of death was esophageal cancer.