March 21, 2023
The Hungarian piano prodigy gave a sensational concert at the Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Center in Ottawa, on March 15, celebrating the anniversary of the Hungarian revolution of 1848. The Hungarian Embassy sponsored the event with the Ambassador from Hungary introducing Misi Boros, a twenty-year-old virtuoso pianist, his first time in Canada. A reception preceded the concert with Hungarian wines served. The red was the popular Szekszardi Voros, and the white the equally popular Jaszberenyi Riesling. I had never heard of Misi Boros, but the Center was full. I heard Hungarian spoken frequently walking in.
Besides pieces by Bach and Beethoven, Misi played Debussy’s Clare-de-Lune, in a fashion that brought tears to my eyes with its melody and lyrical expression. And he showed his technical virtuosity by playing Liszt/Paganini’s La Campanale. It was a tour de force.
Misi was a child prodigy, defined as someone under ten years of age showing talent in a field way beyond his or her age. Since age four, Misi spent most of his time at the piano. Since age eight, he won all national piano competitions in his age group and won competitions in Rome, Milan, and Paris.
As of today, Misi has performed over 300 concerts around the world; I wonder how much time he spends at home in Hungary.
During the introduction, the Hungarian Ambassador talked about the significance of music in Hungary and the number of internationally recognized musicians Hungary has produced. Among composers, she mentioned Bartok and Liszt. Among known conductors, she mentioned Solti.
George Solti showed his musical talent early, attending the Franz Liszt Academy, a well-known musical educational institution in Budapest, by the age of 12, and subsidizing his education by teaching piano. He worked in Frankfurt and Munich in Germany and ended with an illustrious career with the Chicago Symphony, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. I found it interesting to learn that he has the second-highest number of Grammy awards, at 31, after Beyonce, who has 32. Queen Elizabeth knighted Solti in 1972.
The ambassador did not mention other well-known Hungarian conductors, such as Eugene Ormandy, who had a forty-year career with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Ornandy’s musical talent showed early; his father taught him to play the violin at age three and a half and he entered the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music at age five, the youngest ever student the Academy had.
Another well-known Hungarian conductor was George Szell, who spent over twenty years as musical director of the Cleveland Orchestra. At age eleven, he began touring Europe as a pianist and composer and made his debut in London. He was, clearly, a child prodigy.
But there were also pianist prodigies, similar to Misi. One was the incredible George Cziffra, a gypsy or Romani, to use an accepted term today. Cziffra came from a very poor family, and he listened to his sister’s piano practices, and learned to play the piano by mimicking her without sheet music. He played in a circus when he was five years old, for money. The Franz Liszt Academy invited the young talented boy to attend the Academy to gain his classical musical education. Later, he played in bars playing jazz to make some money; some jazz aficionados compared him to Art Tatum for his improvisational skills and technical virtuosity. I listened with amazement to his interpretation of the Duke Ellington song “Sophisticated Lady” on YouTube; his technique and free-flowing melody lines reminded me of Art Tatum.
Unfortunately, the Hungarian army drafted him during WW2 to fight on the Russian border. Cziffra hated the racist Nazis, deserted, and successfully convinced the Russians who captured him that he wanted to fight with the Allies against the Nazis.
After the war, he tried to escape from Hungary but was captured and sent to a labor camp, where he did not play the piano for three years. Once freed, he returned home, regained his piano skills, and gave concerts until his successful escape from Hungary after the 1956 revolution. He settled in France, where he became a citizen and established himself as a concert pianist.
I thought child prodigies were born with talent; it is in their DNA. Not so, according to Laszlo Polgar, who, during his university studies in Hungary, reviewed the bios of 400 famous people in many fields and concluded that anyone can become a genius provided they educate a child in one field from age three. He decided on an experiment to raise his children at home and teach them a specialty. He found someone agreeable to marry him and share in his experiment. They had three daughters whom the parents home-schooled, and Polgar started teaching his first daughter to play chess when she was three years old. The little girl bested his father in chess by the time she was five. And Polgar brought up all three girls to become grandmasters in chess; the middle girl has been the world champion for women for years and defeated ten world champion men during her career to date.
According to some studies, there may be one child prodigy among five to ten million people; and they are characterized by knowing one field at the adult level before they are ten years old. They also have photographic memories, are extremely curious, and have a passion for a field they are interested in.
Child prodigies are similar in characteristics to autistic children. And in most cases, child prodigies have parents who strongly encourage and push their children in improving their skills in a subject.
Hungary has had its fair share of child prodigies, not only in music and chess but also in science, and mathematics as well. For example, John von Neumann was a child prodigy; he could divide five-digit numbers by five-digit numbers at age six and could converse in ancient Greek by age seven.
As a mathematician and physicist, he moved to the US to further his career, where he led the Manhattan project developing the atomic bomb. They often describe him as the father of the atomic bomb. He ended his career as a Professor at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study..
So, are child prodigies born with their talent, or are they educated to become so?
I came across an interview with Misi Boros’ father, a professor of philosophy at the University of Pecs, the birthplace of Misi. When asked how he brought up Misi to become a child prodigy, he said that children need a lot of love and time spent with their parents, which he gave to Misi growing up.
The interviewer further probed whether Misi was told to play the piano several hours a day. The father said no, Misi was happy to practice up to five and six hours a day when he was young. That was not my experience. I took piano lessons when I was young, but when practice time built up to three hours a day after school and doing homework; I rebelled. I preferred to play with my friends. The time came when my parents just gave in; I was not to be a concert pianist. So, can you predict who will be child prodigies?
I believe that child prodigies have it in their DNA to excel in some field, but they also have supporting parents and a burning desire to work hard to achieve perfection in their chosen field. Just my opinion.
andrasthehun.ca 