Anna Rákóczy

BIOGRAPHY

Flutist Anna Rákóczy was born in Budapest, Hungary, and studied Music at the Béla Bartók Conservatory and the Ferenc Liszt Music College with Zoltán Gyöngyössy. She graduated with highest honors and she received the highest musical scholarship in the College, the Scholarship of the Hungarian Republic, awarded annually by the Hungarian Ministry of Education. During these years she developed particular interest in new music and led the way in performing challenging compositions by Ligeti, Berio and Cage. She played in a wind quintet, which garnered several awards: it won first prize at the National Chamber Music Competition, Jeunesse Musical in 1996, received the Reicha Prize at the Sommerakademie in Semmering, Austria in 1999 and finished 2nd in the National Competition of Wind Quintets in 2001.

Since moving into the US three years ago Anna Rákóczy has performed in master classes with Robert Aitken, Istvan Matuz, Andras Adorjan, Jeanne Baxtresser, Emily Skala and Elisabeth Rowe, and has participated in summer festivals with the National Orchestral Institute, the International Festival Institute at Round-Top, Texas and the Lucerne Festival Academy, under the direction of Pierre Boulez.

In 2004 Anna Rákóczy obtained a Master of Music degree from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, where she studied with Marina Piccinini as a Fulbright Scholar. She won First Prize at the Baltimore Music Club Competition, and was a recipient of the Clinton Lee Arrowood Memorial Prize for her outstanding academic achievement. She was selected to perform at the Faculty Chamber Music Concert, where, according to the music critic of the Baltimore Sun, she performed "plunging surely into the piece's technical demands and powerfully into its expressive currents".

Anna Rákóczy has performed most of the standard works of the flute literature in numerous solo recitals. She has given several performances for the Hungarian Ambassador and the Fulbright Board in Washington DC. In 2004 September, along with two other members of Marina Piccinini's studio, she gave a solo recital in the prestigious Tonhalle of Zürich, Switzerland.

Ms. Rákóczy's interest is not confined to music. She enjoys studying the history of music and culture and also has an interest in the philosophical aspects of music. Her paintings and tapestries were exhibited in private galleries in Budapest and throughout the country.

Anna Rákóczy is currently a freelanced musician, and a teacher of music, piano and flute in a private studio serving the Greater Washington Area.