The Franz Liszt Academy of Music is a concert hall and a music university in Budapest, Hungary. It was founded by pianist and composer Franz Liszt on November 14, 1875.
Teaching at the Academy began in 1875 in Liszt’s apartment. In 1879, the Hungarian state obtained a neo-Renaissance building on Andrássy Avenue for Liszt and Erkel, Hungary’s national opera composer, to use, as well as for the increasing number of teachers and students. The building is known now as the “Old Music Academy”. Liszt lived on the first floor and his salon was the scene of the student concerts. The Old Music Academy was the scene of the first golden period of the institution, it was here where the great promises of the new Hungarian music, Dohnányi, Bartók, Kodály, Weiner had their first lessons in composition.
In 1907, the Academy moved into its present building, which is a masterpiece of art nouveau architecture, under the directorship of Ödön Mihalovich, who developed it into a comprehensive institution of world standing. Shortly after a new era in the history of the Academy began: Dohnányi, Bartók and Kodály implemented mayor changes in the education of the institution. They were ambitious to meet the musical needs and interests shown by the layers of society forging ahead in culture.
The period until 1944, when Dohnányi and Hubay, the most important Hungarian violin virtuoso of the century, headed the Academy was the second golden age. Master classes and exceptional students defined its image. It is a fact that the Music Academy owes its fame primarily to the people teaching and studying there at this period, partly due to a wave of emigration that took place in phases. During the World War II, Bartók and Dohnányi left the country, after the 1956 revolution, the very best musicians of the Academy – Solti, Doráti, Fricsay, Cziffra, Anda, Zathurechky among them – were scattered round the world. Kodály stayed in Hungary and his initiatives implemented revolutionary changes in the Hungarian music pedagogy.
There was a profusion of talents during the period commencing after 1957. Ligeti, Kurtág, Eötvös, Frankl, Vásáry, Pauk and Perényi started their careers those years. A mile-stone of those days was the establishment of a jazz department which has been operating successfully ever since.
As the citadel of musical education , the Liszt Academy was ranked as a university in 1971, when it was granted the license to confer doctoral degrees. Graduates in the 1970s included Éva Marton, Zoltán Kocsis, Dezső Ránki, András Schiff, Jenő Jandó and László Polgár.
Ever since its foundation, the Academy has been the most prestigious music university operating in Hungary. A major development in its history was the recent establishment of a new, independent Folk Music Faculty.
The Franz Liszt Academy of Music is as much a living monument to Hungary’s continued musical life, as it is to the country’s musical past.
