Performer
Manami Matsushita, Piano
Balazs Fulei, Piano

Manami Matsushita was born in Osaka, Japan, and started playing piano at the age of five. As a child, she won many top prizes in national piano competitions. During this time, she also trained in and performed chamber music with other musicians. She made her piano concert debut as a soloist at the age of sixteen in which she played Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 at Izumi Hall in Osaka.

 Manami studied at Osaka College of Music with Prof. Masatoshi Matsumoto and Prof. Shinya Okahara, where she got a bachelor’s degree with honors. During her time there, she became fascinated with German classical music and decided to continue her studies in Germany. She studied at the University of Music Würzburg (Hochschule für Musik Würzburg) with the world-famous pianist Prof. Bernd Glemser, whom Manami was greatly inspired by his music and learned many important concepts and techniques as a pianist. She graduated with a master’s degree as valedictorian of her class. Afterwards, she continued her studies at the University of Music Würzburg  and obtained a Konzertexamen, the highest degree that can be obtained from a music college in Germany, with Summa Cum Laude also as valedictorian of her class.

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Balázs Fülei is a Franz Liszt, Artisjus and Junior Prima award winner pianist with more than thirty piano concertos in his repertoire, with all the concertos by Beethoven, Brahms and Bartók among them. The sophisticated compilations of his solo recitals, usually accompanied by the artist’s personal introduction, always put classical music in an exciting new perspective. He is an assistant professor at the Liszt Academy and has been the Head of the Department of Chamber Music since 2015. He has held masterclasses all over the world and he is the founder and artistic director of the Echo Summer Academy held every year in the Károlyi Castle in Fehérvárcsurgó.

Balázs Fülei, according not just to the trade press, has won the recognition of the profession and the audience in Hungary and abroad not only with his “fully matured production, perfectly thought out and meticulously elaborated to the smallest detail”, but with his unusual ideas as well. Balázs Fülei has also created a new genre thanks to his excellent lecturing, communicating and verbal skills. At least in Hungary, as the tradition of so-called “storytelling” concerts in America dates back several decades and is linked to Leonard Bernstein. At these unusual concerts, involving the audience as well, he presents the pieces he is playing with a few stories; often projects pictures and quotes poems related to the topic. He aims to bring music closer to everyone, to put the audience in the perspective of their own lives. Some programs are for adults, while other concerts are targeted for children, elementary and high school students. However, one parameter is always common: Balázs Fülei performs the pieces at the highest artistic level. A concert is always a concert. For him, music is an opportunity to connect, in which the one who is listening is always involved. His abilities got noticed by the Bartók Radio, too: since September 2020, every second week, he has been the host of a radio programme called Quartet, which is very popular.