Benedek Csalog         Johanna Bartz

Hungarian flautist, early music specialist.

He is the initiator of The Quantz Project, which aims to record all flute works of Quantz. Of these, approx. 30 have already been recorded.

 

During his high school years, he attended masterclasses by Nicholas McGegan and Barthold Kuijken. After having received his modern flute diploma in Budapest he studied the Baroque flute with Barthold Kuijken at The Royal Conservatory in The Hague, where he graduated in 1991. He has been performing as a soloist and chamber musician ever since. He performed in most European countries, Russia, Japan, North and South America, and the Middle East. For 17 years he was a teacher of the Baroque flute and chamber music at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Leipzig. He also taught at the Bydgoszcz Academy of Music in Poland and at the Faculty of Music of the Széchenyi István University of Győr (Hungary).

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teaching activities

Prominent baroque flute players, both Hungarians and foreigners studied with him in his class at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Leipzig, in masterclasses or privately. He took part in three of most prestigious early music competitions, and has won all of them.

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He held masterclasses in Hungary, Germany, Portugal, Japan, Brazil, Slovakia, Poland, Serbia, Croatia and The Netherlands and was a regular guest teacher at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory and the Gnessin Institute in Moscow. He was artistic director of the Summer Academy of Early Music in Tokaj / Hungary. From 2016 he has again been giving masterclasses in Hungary, as well.

 

competitions

NFA Baroque Flute Artist Competition, Orlando, USA 1st prize; 

Concours Musica Antiqua, Bruges, Belgium, 1st prize (soloist category);

Johann Heinrich Schmelzer Wettbewerb, Melk, Austria, shared 2nd prize (first prize not awarded)

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CD recordings as soloist

J.J. Quantz. The Complete Flute Sonatas Vol.1 (Brilliant Classics)

Johann Sebastian Bach: Die 4 authentischen Flötensonaten with Miklós Spányi, Silbermann fortepiano 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)

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recitals

As a soloist, he was a guest artist of the following major festivals: Holland 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 Musical Offering, 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 there. 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 among others with harpsichordists Léon Berben, Ton Koopman, 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. He gave a duo recital with Barthold Kuijken in Budapest. 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.

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 flute works of C. Ph. E. Bach (Zürich, Juiz da Fora in Brazil, Budapest), the flute sonatas of J. S. Bach (Moscow, Budapest), Handel's flute works (Budapest), inégalité (Budapest, Leipzig, Moscow), improvisation, ornamentation (Moscow, Budapest, Rijeka)

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The Quantz Project

After years of preparation, he launched the Quantz Project in December 2019 at the website http://www.the-quantz-project.com/. The goal is to record and publish all of J. J. Quantz’s works, including about 200 flute sonatas and 300 flute concertos. In 2023 the Dutch label 'Brilliant Classics'  took over the project and intends to release all of her flute sonatas on approximately 25 CDs