Antal Zalai

Antal Zalai (* 31 January 1981 as Antal János Szalai in Budapest ) is a Hungarian violinist .

Career

Zalai comes from a family of musicians, his ancestors up to his great-grandfather were already musicians. He received his first violin lessons from his father when he was five, and his teachers were László Dénes , Jozef Kopelman and Péter Komlós between the ages of seven and fourteen . He graduated from the Royal Conservatory of Brussels in 2009. He also attended master classes by Erick Friedman , Pinchas Zukerman , Tibor Varga , Lewis Kaplan , Isaac Stern , György Pauk and others.

As a concert violinist, Zalai made his debut at the age of twelve at a UNESCO gala moderated by Monica Bellucci , which was broadcast by RAI . In the following year he appeared at a classical gala on Swedish television under the direction of Paavo Järvi . For Yehudi Menuhin's 80th birthday , at the age of fifteen, he played Béla Bartók's Violin Concerto No. 1 in the Franz Liszt Music Academy . In 1999 he recorded his first album with János Starker , Tibor Varga and György Sebők .

He has performed with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra , the German Symphony Orchestra Berlin , the Hong Kong Sinfonietta and at the Spring Gala Concert in Vienna with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under Fabio Luisi . Recently there have been appearances and a. with the Nuremberg State Philharmonic and the Brandenburg Symphony Orchestra in Germany, as well as in Mexico, Brazil, Kuwait, Russia, Belgium, Slovenia and Hungary.