Gyorgy Sandor

György Sándor (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈɟørɟ ˈʃaːndor]; 21 September 1912 – 9 December 2005) was a Hungarian pianist and writer.

Sándor was born in Budapest. He studied at the Liszt Academy in Budapest under Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, and debuted as a performer in 1930. He toured as a concert pianist through the 1930s, making his Carnegie Hall debut in 1939. He became an American citizen and served in the Army Signal Corps and the Intelligence and Special Services from 1942 to 1944.

Sándor remained friends with Bartók throughout his life, and was one of only ten people who attended Bartók's funeral in 1945. Sándor played the premiere of Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 3 on 8 February 1946 with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The performance was repeated on 26 February 1946 by the same ensemble in Carnegie Hall, New York, and recorded for Columbia Masterworks in April 1946.

Following World War II, he returned to the concert stage. His technique was described as "Lisztian" and his repertoire universal, although later in his career his playing of Bartók was much in demand. Initially he recorded numerous piano works by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninov, Schumann and others for Columbia Masterworks. Then with Vox, he recorded the complete works for solo piano of Zoltán Kodály and of Sergei Prokofiev; and the complete piano works of Béla Bartók; for the latter he won the Grand Prix du Disque of the Charles Cros Academy in 1965.

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