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The Hungarian violinist, Dénes Zsigmondy, was born Dénes Hugo Liedemann in Budapest. He began learning the violin at the age of 4. He studied at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, receiving tuition from Géza de Kresz, Leó Weiner and Imre Waldbauer. His musical education as a violinist was further influenced by working with Carl Flesch, Váša Príhoda and Zino Francescatti. Personal contact with Béla Bartók inspired his great interest in B. Bartók’s musical vision and exploration of Eastern European folk music. In 1944 he moved to Germany to begin his performing career, when he also adopted his mother's maiden name, Zsigmondy, to emphasise his Hungarian roots.
From 1946 Zsigmondy had an international career as a soloist, performing throughout Europe and in the Americas, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. He performed as a soloist throughout the world, with orchestras such as the Bamberger Symphoniker, Berliner Symphoniker and Wiener Symphoniker, the Boston Philharmonic, Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Münchner Philharmoniker and Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestras, the radio orchestras of RIAS-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Munich and Sydney, Camerata Salzburg, Stuttgarter Kammerorchester and others. As a recitalist, he performed mainly with his wife, the pianist Anneliese Nissen, with whom he also made a large number of recordings, from the 1940's until her death in 1994. He premiered the violin concertos of Günter Bialas, Harald Genzmer, Helmut Eder and Fritz Büchtger, and worked with composers such as Zoltán Kodály, Roger Sessions, Luigi Dallapiccola, György Ligeti and György Kurtág. Two of G. Kurtág's Signs, Games and Messages are dedicated to Zsigmondy and the memory of his wife respectively.
In 1972, Dénes Zsigmondy was appointed Professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, and Guest Professor at the Boston University. Later in his life, he taught at the Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität in Mainz, at the Hochschule für Musik in Augsburg, at the Internationale Sommerakademie of the Mozarteum in Salzburg and as a faculty member of the European Mozart Academy in Prague and Krakow, as well as giving countless master-classes around the world, from San Francisco to Hong Kong. Many of his numerous students came regularly each summer to the Holzhauser Musiktage, which he and his wife founded together with Wilhelm Kempff in 1978, and of which he was the Artistic Director until 2003. Among his pupils during this period was an eleven-year-old Isabelle Faust, who came backstage after a duo recital. In 1997 he received the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary. Dénes Zsigmondy died in Seeshaupt (Germany) on February 15, 2014, aged 91, having retired from all musical activities a few years earlier.
While owning a violin by Jean-Baptiste Vuilliaume, during his late concert life (and on this recording) Dénes Zsigmondy played the "Ernst" Stradivari from 1709, named after Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst, which was on generous loan to him from private benefactors in Hamburg. It is an endearing coincidence that Stradivari made this violin in the very year of J.S. Bach's first meeting with violinist Johann Georg Pisendel, who might have inspired him to compose the Sonatas & Partitas for solo violin, BWV 1001-1006, recorded by Dénes Zsigmondy in 1995, a year adter Anneliese Nissen, his wife and duo partner of fifty years, died. |
