Artist description Nándor Szederkényi [Sederkeny], first prize winner of the 1979 Szigeti International Violin Competition, performs as soloist throughout Europe, North America and Asia. In addition he has been highly respected for his work as concertmaster in Japan and was on faculty at Brandon University, Canada. He plays on a beautiful violin made by Ferdinand Gagliano in 1762.

Music Style Everything for violin...

Musical Influences All the great violinists!

Artist History Started in Hungary, then Germany, Canada and Japan, all this in the last about 20 years.

Instruments Violin, Violin & Piano, two Violins

Press Reviews Solo Violin Works by S. C. Eckhardt-GramatteReview in CAML Newsletter, Vol. 28, No. 3 (December 2000)Eckhardt-Gramatté composed four suites for solo violin, the first three in the early 1920s and the last in 1968. Of the two suites recorded by Szederkenyi, who was first prizewinner of the 1979 Szigeti International Violin Competition, only the second and third movements of the Violin Solo Suite No. 3 ("Suite de Mallorca") have been recorded before.Szederkenyi’s recording of the complete Suites Nos. 2 and 3 is a major addition to the Eckhardt-Gramatté discography and, when compared against the excerpts recorded by the composer, the listener is made immediately aware that the Eckhardt-Gramatté has found a new and convincing advocate. Szederkenyi’s playing is very different from the composer’s. One could wish for more dynamic inflection in the first movements of both suites, for more abandon in the finales, or for more give-and-take in the "Badinage" of Suite de Mallorca, but these are no more than matters of taste. The plaintive "Arriette" of Suite de Mallorca is especially well played—preferable to the composer’s much freer interpretation—and the many double and triple stops in the last three movements of Suite No. 3 are impeccably in tune. In short, these are authoritative performances of substantial works. The Concerto for Solo Violin, completed in Barcelona in 1925, is a mammoth work, comprising three movements plus epilogue and lasting over a half-hour in performance. The composer’s own recording, made for Odeon in 1934, has twice been released on LP. As John Boulton wrote in 1982, Eckhardt-Gramatté’s playing "is wonderful; there is no question of her complete mastery or of the shining distinction of her style.... [I]n listening to [the Concerto] one thinks instinctively a little of Paganini and much more of Bruch and Wieniawski. It deserves to be played—but not so much as its composer deserves to be heard."Alongside this historic recording, Szederkenyi’s stands proudly on its own merits. Certainly, Eckhardt-Gramatté’s playing is more rhapsodic, with exaggerated agogics and much tempo rubato. In the first movement, she is more playful in the a piacere episodes and, in the second movement and epilogue, her uncanny imitations of the clarinet and oboe respectively, are more successful than Szederkenyi’s; in both instances, he simply doesn’t play softly enough. The composer, too, seems more at home in the eerie tremolando passages in the third movement (beginning at mm. 83 and 395), although the weird, whistling harmonics that Szederkenyi elicits at m. 395ff are arresting in their own way. As the only recording of this important work available on CD, even a merely passable performance would have been welcome. As it is, Szederkenyi’s wide dynamic range, full-blooded fortissimos, solid technique and instinctive grasp of this complex music make his recording a worthy modern-day counterpart to the composer’s own brilliant performance. Further, Szederkenyi’s full-bodied sound and the superb quality of the recording makes the limitations of 1930’s recording technology all the more evident.The composer’s performance of four of the Caprices is included in volume 3 of E-Gré Plays E-Gré, the late Francis Chaplin delivers first-rate performances of all ten Caprices, and No. 1 receives a finely-chiselled reading on the new Szederkenyi release.

Location Vienna - Austria

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