György Cziffra was a Hungarian and French pianist, born in Budapest on November 5, 1921, into a poor Hungarian Roma family. His father played the cimbalom in Paris cabarets and restaurants during the 1910s. Cziffra learned to play by watching his sister’s lessons. At five, he was performing improvisations on popular tunes in bars and circuses, and could pick out and arrange melodies by ear. These performances helped support his family but later drew ridicule from critics.
At nine, Cziffra entered the Franz Liszt Academy, becoming its youngest student. His teachers included Ernst von Dohnányi and István Thomán. He began giving concerts in Hungary in 1933 and toured the Netherlands and Scandinavia in 1937. After returning to Hungary in 1947, he played piano in bars and clubs to support his family. In 1955, he won the Franz Liszt International Piano Competition in Budapest.
In 1956, Cziffra moved with his family to Vienna, where he gave a concert in November. After performing in Paris and London, he settled in France and later acquired French citizenship, using the name Georges. He helped arrange the restoration of the organ at La Chaise-Dieu Abbey and later founded a festival there. In 1969, he established an international piano competition in Versailles. In 1973, he founded the Cziffra Foundation to restore the royal chapel of Saint-Frambourg in Senlis and support young artists. The foundation began holding annual auditions for young performers in the chapel in 1976. Cziffra also gave master classes in Senlis from 1986.
Liszt’s works formed the core of Cziffra’s repertoire. He also performed concertos by Chopin, Grieg, Rachmaninoff, and Tchaikovsky; miniatures by Mozart and Beethoven; and his own arrangements and transcriptions of operatic excerpts by Rossini, Gounod, Strauss, and Tchaikovsky. His playing combined virtuoso technique with forceful intensity; his performances in the 1970s and 1980s were described as somewhat more restrained. He toured Europe and, in 1984, performed in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Toronto. Toward the end of his career, he gave six or seven concerts a year, devoting much of his time to the foundation. After his son, conductor György Cziffra, died in a fire in 1981, he no longer worked with orchestras.
Cziffra died of a heart attack on January 15, 1994, while suffering from lung cancer. He was 72 and was buried in Senlis beside his son.