Benedek Csalog

Benedek Csalog (Budapest, 26 June 1965 - ) Hungarian flautist, early music specialist, one of the leading players of the baroque flute
== His career ==
He started to play the piano at the age of five then went on to study the recorder and the flute. His interest in playing the Baroque flute started in 1981. At the age of 15, he formed his first ensemble together with Balázs Máté, Miklós Spányi and Péter Szűts, and performed Bach's Musikalisches Opfer. Later, the same group of people formed the core of Concerto Armonico chamber orchestra (this is not the same as the current Concerto Armonico re-formed around 2015). During his high school years, he attended masterclasses by Nicholas McGegan and Barthold Kuijken. From 1984 he studied in the class of Tihamér Elek at the Teacher Training Institute of the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music. He finished in 1987 then studied the Baroque flute with Barthold Kuijken at Royal Conservatory of The Hague Conservatory in The Hague, where he graduated in 1991. He has been performing as a soloist and chamber musician since 1987. He was invited and played in most of the European countries, Japan, North and South America, and the Middle East. From 1992 to 2008 he was a teacher of the Baroque flute and chamber music at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Leipzig. From 2005 to 2008 he also taught at the Bydgoszcz Academy of Music in Poland, and was a professor at the Faculty of Music of the Széchenyi István University of Győr from 2016-2019.
He held masterclasses in Hungary, Germany, Portugal, Japan, Brazil, Slovakia, Poland, Serbia, Croatia and The Netherlands; he is a regular guest professor at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory and the Gnessin Institute in Moscow. He was artistic director of the Summer Academy of Early Music in Tokaj / Hungary. Since 2016, he has been holding regular courses in Hungary, as well.
== Competition awards ==
He took part in three international early music competitions, and has won all of them:
* 1995 Baroque Flute Artist Competition, Orlando, USA, 1st prize
* 1996 Concours Musica Antiqua, Bruges, Belgium, 1st prize (soloist category)
* 2000 (?) Johann Heinrich Schmelzer Wettbewerb, Melk, Austria shared 2nd prize (first prize not awarded)
== CD recordings ==
* Johann Sebastian Bach: Die 4 authentischen Flötensonaten with Miklós Spányi, piano and clavichord (Ramée)
* G. Paganelli: 6 Trios with Carmen Leoni etc. (Hungaroton)
* Corelli: Sonatas Op. 5 No. 1-6 with Léon Berben, harpsichord (Hungaroton)
* J. Chr. Bach: Sonatas with Miklós Spányi, tangent piano (Hungaroton)
* J. S. Bach: Musical Offering with David Timm, Harpsichord, etc. (Production of the Thomaskirche, Leipzig)
* Krebs: Sonaten und Triosonaten (a production of MDR)
* J. J. Quantz: 4 Flute Concertos with Aura Musicale, Máté Balázs (Hungaroton)
* J. J. Quantz: 7 Flute Sonatas with Rita Papp, Harpsichord (Hungaroton)
* "Klänge der Nacht" - Werke von Müthel und Kirnberger with Miklós Spányi, Clavichord (Raumklang)
* Works by German authors for solo flute - Bach, C. Ph. E. Bach, Telemann, Fischer (Hungaroton)
* Music in Italian Style with Léon Berben, harpsichord (Do-La Studio, Ungarn)
There are a number of other chamber music recordings, as well as recordings of various orchestral and oratorical works, mainly as a member of German baroque ensembles. He participated in the recording of all harpsichord concertos of C.P.E.Bach as a member of the Concerto Armonico ensemble (BIS).
Hungarian Radio and foreign radio stations regularly broadcast his live or recorded European concerts and CD recordings.
== Concerts, appearances ==
As a soloist, he was a guest artist of the following major festivals: Dutch Festival, Festival van Vlaanderen, Musicora Paris, Avignon Festival, Stockholm Early Music Festival, Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik, Festival Radovljica, St. Petersburg Early Music Festival, etc. He made his debut in the USA (Chicago) with Quantz’s G-major Concerto and was invited to Boston to perform several times Bach’s Musicalisches Opfer, accompanied by US American artists. He has performed in Moscow almost every year since 2004. In 2019 he performed all of J. S. Bach’s flute sonatas at the recently built modern Zaryadye Hall. He gave a duo concert with Barthold Kuijken in Budapest.
In The Hague and Leipzig, he performed the entire flute chamber music of C. Ph. E. Bach: 45 works in 8-8 concerts.
He most often performs in the company of a single keyboard player. He played in Hungary with harpsichordists Léon Berben, Christine Shornsheim, Shalev Ad-El, Miklós Spányi and Nicholas Parle. He also had iconic artists such as William Christie, Sigiswald Kuijken or Emma Kirkby as his partners.
In Hungary he has performed as a soloist several times in the framework of the Sopron Early Music Days, the Budapest Spring Festival, the Veszprém Early Music Festival and the Budapest Bach Week.
== Lectures, workshops ==
He regularly gives lectures and workshops abroad and in Hungary on the following topics: rhetoric, Proportionlehre, Figurenlehre (Tokyo), baroque repertoire of the flute (Moscow, Budapest), the complete flute works of C. Ph. E. Bach (Zurich, Juiz da Fora, Brazil, Budapest), the flute sonatas of J. S. Bach (Moscow, Budapest), Handel's flute works (Budapest), inégalité (Budapest, Leipzig, Moscow), improvisation, ornamentation (Moscow, Budapest)
== Quantz Project ==
After years of preparation, he launched the Quantz Project in December 2019 at the website http://www.the-quantz-project.com/ with French flautist Alexis Kossenko. The goal is to record and publish all of Johann Joachim Quantz|J. J. Quantz’s works, including about 200 flute sonatas and 300 flute concertos, on the website above in CD quality but for free download. According to their plan, the artists would complete the recordings by 2030, which they intend to realize with community funding and foundation grants.
== Family ==
He is the son of :hu:Csalog_Zsolt|Zsolt Csalog (1935–1997), writer, sociologist and Éva Pócs (1936-) Széchenyi Prize winner ethnographer an folclorist. His siblings are Gábor Csalog (1960-) pianist and Eszter Csalog (Grüll Tiborné) linguist (1970-).
His children: Rebeca Amorim Csalog harpist and anthropologist (b. 1996), Márta Csalog (b. 2006) and Sámuel Csalog (b. 2020)
He married twice, his second wife from 2020 is flautist Zsófia Lázár.
Category:1965 births
Category:Hungarian flautists
Category:Hungarian musicologists