György Cziffra

György Cziffra was one of the most celebrated and individual piano virtuosos of the postwar decades in Europe, especially noted for his powers of improvisation and as a Liszt pianist. He was born in a shantytown called Angels Court on the outskirts of Budapest to a family of gypsy musicians. The family was desperately poor, and ultimately both his father and a sister died of starvation. He learned piano by watching an older sister's lessons. By the age of five, he was improvising requests from the audience at a circus. At ten, he was sent to the conservatory in Budapest. He ...