SCHIFF, ANDRÁS

SCHIFF, ANDRÁS (1953– ), pianist. Born in Budapest, he started piano lessons with Elisabeth Vadasz and made his debut at the age of nine. He continued his musical studies at the Franz Liszt Academy, and later in London with George Malcolm. After winning prizes at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow (1974) and at the Leeds International Competition (1975), Schiff embarked upon an international career. He gained recognition for his insightful and intellectual interpretations of the music of Bach. Recitals and special cycles of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, and Bartók formed an important part of his activities, and he moved easily between solo recitals, concertos, ensemble playing, and the use of singers (notably Peter Schreier) and instrumentalists. He increasingly conducted performances of concertos from the keyboard. Schiff was the founder and the artistic director from 1989 to 1998 of the annual Musiktage Mondsee. In 1999 he created his own chamber orchestra, the Cappella Andrea Barca. His Haydn festival in the Wigmore Hall won the Royal Philharmonic Society/Charles Heidsieck Award for the best concert series of 1988–89, and in 1989 he was awarded the Wiener Flötenuhr, the Mozart Prize of the City of Vienna. He was also awarded the Bartók Prize (1991); the Claudio Arrau Memorial Medal from the Robert Schumann Society (1994); the Kossuth Prize, the highest Hungarian honor (1996); and the Musikfest-Preis Bremen (for outstanding international artistic achievement) in 2003. In 2001 he became a British citizen. Among his publications are "Schubert's Piano Sonatas: Thoughts about Interpretation and Performance," in Schubert Studies (1998), 191–208. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Grove online; Baker's Biographical Dictionary (1997); C. Montparker. "The Insights and Intellect of Andras Schiff," in: Clavier, 34, no. 8 (1995), 6–11. (Naama Ramot (2nd ed.)