Tivadar Szántó (also known as Theodor Szanto; born Theodor Jehuda Löb Schmulowitz; June 3, 1877 – January 7, 1934) was a Hungarian pianist and composer. Born in Vienna into the Jewish Shmulevich family, he was the son of the cantor Abraham Schmulowitz and Anna Feldman, and the uncle of conductor László Halász. He died in Budapest.
After studying in Vienna, Szántó entered the Budapest Academy of Music in 1893, where he studied piano with Kálmán Chován and composition with Hans von Koessler. From 1898 to 1902 he continued his training in Berlin with Ferruccio Busoni. Following successful concert tours in Germany and England, during which he performed Beethoven and Liszt sonatas as well as his own works, he established himself as an important pianist.
Szántó moved to Paris in 1905 and settled in Geneva in 1914. He returned to Budapest in 1922, left Hungary again in the late 1920s, and returned to the Hungarian capital near the end of his life. A widely celebrated soloist and chamber musician, he was especially admired for his interpretations of contemporary French music, notably Debussy and Ravel, as well as works by the English composer Frederick Delius and the Hungarian composers Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály. Among his students were Luis Ascot and Berta Alves de Souza. For his promotion of French music, he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1931.
As a composer and arranger, Szántó produced numerous piano transcriptions of organ and choral works by Johann Sebastian Bach, including the Fantasy and Fugue in G minor, BWV 542, and an organ chorale prelude. He also prepared a five-movement piano suite from Stravinsky’s ballet “Petrushka.” At Delius’s request, he rewrote the piano part of Delius’s concerto in 1906 to make it more brilliant and virtuosic, giving the first performance of the composer-approved version in 1907 and performing it again in 1912, 1913, and 1921; the original 1904 version also remained in circulation.
Interested in Japanese music, Szántó incorporated Japanese influences into several works, including an opera and orchestral and piano suites; some of these works were recorded by Noriko Ogawa in 1999. His compositions include “Oriental Studies,” Op. 1, “Dramatic Elegy,” Op. 3, the suite “Contrasts” (1912), the orchestral “Rhapsody” (1917), the opera “Taifun” (staged in Mannheim in 1924), the “Japanese Suite” (1926), the operetta “Count Romeo” (1931), with a libretto by László Szilágyi, and the opera “Samum” (1933).
Szántó was married to the dancer Olga Békeffy. During a concert tour of Sweden in 1934, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died shortly after returning to Budapest, at Korányi Hospital. He was buried in Farkasrét Cemetery.