Magyar
ÁGNES KÁLLAY
Cellist
Ms. Kállay is a young Hungarian cellist with an impressive international career and concert appearances. She has performed in solo concerts in Europe. North America and Africa.
Born in 1981, Ágnes Kállay started playing the violoncello at the age of six, as a student of Magda Kovácsné Angyal. She continued her studies under György Déri at the Béla Bartók Conservatory of Music Secondary School.
Ágnes graduated at the famous Franz Liszt Academy of Music, Budapest in 2006. In the following year she earned DAAD scholarship and moved to Cologne (Germany) to study under Maria Kliegel at the Hochschule für Musik.
In 2004 she won the Alpe Adria International Violoncello Competition in Gorizia, Italy. Following this competition, she performed in Venice, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Klagenfurt, Salzburg and at the Vienna Konzerthaus.
Thanks to the music performances in her family, she began playing chamber music right when she started to play the instrument. In 2007 she placed first with Katalin Csillagh pianist at the Beethoven Chamber Music Competition, for the ‘Gwyneth George Award’ London, UK, organized by Beethoven Piano Society of Europe.
In 2008 she continued her studies with Nick Tzavaras and the Shanghai Quartet at Montclair State University (USA).
In 2010 she was selected among the best 13 cellist at the 5th Unisa International String competition in South Africa.
In 2010, 2011 and 2012, – three times – she won the Ackerman Chamber Music prize at Stony Brook University.
She participated in the master classes of Ralph Kirshbaum, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, Philippe Muller, Guido Schiefen, Alberto Portugheis, Martin Lovett, Déri György, Gulyás Márta, Ida Kavafian, Leon Fleisher, Pieter Wispelwey, Joel Krosnick and Emanuel Ax.
In 2010 she was invited to the Tanglewood Summer Music Festival, where she had the chance to work with Steven Ansell, Norman Fischer, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Michael Tilson Thomas, Herbert Blomstedt, Stefan Asbury, Robert Spano and John Williams.
In 2011 she qualified for the final round with her flute trio at Coleman Chamber Music Competition, in Los Angeles.
In 2013 she completed her doctoral studies with Colin Carr at Stony Brook University (USA).
In 2013 with her piano trio, Trio Artica, she received Special Recognition at Plowman Chamber Music Competition in Columbia, Missouri.
As a baroque cellist, she performs with Camerata Hungarica, Mandel Quartet, Excanto and Marquise early music ensembles. She has given master classes at Renaissance and Baroque Week in Gyor (Hungary), and at Silicon Valley Music Festival in California. From September of 2013 she has become a professor at the Béla Bartók Conservatory and at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest.
The American Hungarian Museum organized two concerts for Ágnes. One at St. Stephen’s R. C. Magyar Church in Passaic NJ (2009) and one at Lambert Castle Museum, Paterson NJ (2010).