Andor Földes

Andor Földes studied at Franz Liszt Academy of Music. The recorded working language is English and Hungarian. Employment is recorded with Hochschule für Musik Saar. Distinctions recorded are Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Földes first studied the piano with his mother, Valerie Ipolye, and with Tibor Szatmari in his home town of Óbuda. He made his public debut performing a Mozart concerto with the Budapest Philharmonic when he was 8 years old (1921). He entered the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in 1922. Földes studied with Ernő Dohnányi until 1932 and with Béla Bartók from 1929. On April 30, 1934 he played the Piano Concerto No. 1 by Johannes Brahms live in Hungarian Radio together with Royal Opera Orchestra conducted by Lajos Rajter. He made his American debut in a radio recital in 1940, and his recital debut at New York Town Hall in 1941. On November 3, 1947, he performed Bartók's Second Piano Concerto in the opening concert of the 18th season of the National Orchestral Association, conducted by Léon Barzin, at Carnegie Hall in New York City 1947. It was the first performance of the concerto in New York, though there had been earlier American performances in Chicago, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco and Bartok himself had performed the work in 1940 in Cleveland with the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Artur Rodzinski. His 1948 recording of the Bartók 2nd piano concerto is prized by collectors, as is a set of Bartók works he recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, which won the Grand Prix du Disque and other prizes. Földes met his wife (Lili Rendy), a Hungarian journalist, in New York and they became U.S. citizens (see his wife's book Two on the Continent Dutton, 1947). Due to his European concert engagements being more plentiful than his American ones, he and his wife moved to Europe, settling in Switzerland in 1961. Besides a large discography, which includes not only Bartók but also works by Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Falla, Debussy, Poulenc, Liszt, Schubert, Schumann, and Rachmaninoff, Földes was the author of "Keys to the Keyboard" (1948), an article in the Etude Magazine(USA) (December, 1953) "Impressions of a Musical Journey to Africa", and an article "Beethoven's Kiss" in Reader's Digest (November 1986), also an autobiography 70 Years on Music's Magic Carpet (published 2004). Among his awards are the Grand Cross of Merit, given by Germany in 1959 for his help in raising funds to have the Beethoven Halle in Bonn rebuilt, and the Silver Medal of the City of Paris, given in 1969. Földes died at his home in Herrliberg, Switzerland, on February 9, 1992, after falling down a flight of stairs. He was 78 years old. At the time he was preparing to give an eight-day master class at the Beethoven House in Bonn later that year.