Folk concert by Katalin Szvorák

Categories: Concert
Date: 24/09/2019
Time: 19 h 00
Location: Balassi Institute, Cultural Service of the Embassy of Hungary in Brussels
Links: iCal - Google Calendar

Song message – the Jubilee concert of the Kossuth prize awarded folksinger, Katalin Szvorák in collaboration with Balázs Cserta (wind instruments) and Daniel Szabó (cimbalom).

Katalin Szvorák was born in 1958, Losonc. She spent the first five years of her childhood at Pinc; then she moved to Fülek with her family, where she has lived for 15 years.

In 1980; being the only Hungarian candidate living abroad, she got the Title ’Young Master of Folk Art’. One year later, in 1981 she won the folk singing competition ’Röpülj páva’. She worked as a self-managed artiste for 2 decades (1983 – 2005); she was soloist of Honvéd Ensemble.

From 1996, she was a folk music teacher at the Vujicsics Music School in Szentendre for 20 years. In 2010 and 2011, she taught as a guest lecturer at the Folk Music Department of the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music. In 2017, she gave a masterclass at the Liszt Academy.

In the past 40 years, she gave concerts in more than 45 countries. Winner at several international contests, she owns a great variety of important and distinguishing titles. Among others, she is honorary citizen of Pinc Village, Fülek and Pest County.

Her first major professional recognition was the Liszt Prize in 2000. She also got a special, rarely donated prize; the Alternative Kossuth Prize in 2010. In 2013, she received Kossuth Prize.

Most recently, in the fall of 2018, she received the European Citizen Prize.  In January 2019, she was awarded the Jean Monnet Commemorative Medal, and on March 15, the Central Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit.

She was the first in Hungary who published eight albums about melodies of the peoples living in Carpathian Basin in their original languages. The first children’s folk songs album and the first canonical folk singer album belongs to her lifework, as well. She has brought out a publication for stroke patients; published a canonical trilogy with folk songs and a CD entitled A Teremtő dicsérete (The Praise of the Creator), that contains religious hymns. Moreover, she made a duet record with Levente Szörényi and two with Juli Kudliki.

Last spring, she published several albums, one of them called Hazagondolás (Thinking back home) contains folksongs, beliefs and folktales about the ’Palóc’. Another, the Tölgyfa-testvér (Oak Brother) consists of songs inspired by Slovak folk poetry. She has published her double album ‘Szvorak 60’, as well.  The album Dalüzenet (Song message), the masterpiece of her oeuvre came out this spring, in 2019. Currently, she is working on her 39th publication, the Tibor Ág memorial album.

You may register for the event through this link.