The pianist Ferenc Rados comes from a musical family: his father, Dezső Rados, was a famous violin teacher. The young Rados attended the Béla Bartók Specialist Music School as István Antal's pupil between 1952 and 1956, and from the 1956/57 academic year till 1959 studied with Pál Kadosa at the Music Academy.
In 1964 Ferenc Rados began teaching, at first at the Béla Bartók Specialist Music School, and later at the Music Academy. Initially he worked as Pál Kadosa's assistant, but eventually became a professor of piano and chamber music of legendary fame, whose teaching played a decisive role in the careers of a whole generation of musicians. Every one of our now world-famous pianists was his pupil, and many of the musicians who form the main body of Hungarian musical life attended his chamber music classes. Besides teaching in the strict sense of the word, he has devoted much time to listening to and advising already mature, successful artists, chamber ensembles and even orchestras. "Indeed, he is the master. He knows things currently, here in Hungary, about music, piano playing, which very few people know, or no-one knows besides him. He has had a decisive influence on generations. Rados is underappreciated, has always been underappreciated. Perhaps he himself is one of the causes of this, with his excessive modesty, the unquestionable characteristics of his nature, his slight tendency to irony. However, these characteristics always serve music and benefit his pupils." (Zoltán Kocsis)
Ferenc Rados proved himself also to be an outstanding performer of considerable influence, though he stopped giving public performances as a pianist at the end of the eighties. When playing music on period instruments became fashionable in Hungary, he devoted some of his concerts to the fortepiano. "Rados… is changed, transformed, and plays with an awesome inner intensity and suggestiveness… What gives his playing its value and authenticity is that one is aware – more than with others – of a sense of calling." (Antal Boronkay) György Kroó summed up the essence of Rados's art in Új Zenei Újság (New Music Journal) as follows: "If I look for the most characteristic feature of Ferenc Rados's art as a performer, for me that manifests itself in the speech-like quality of his playing: the rhythm speaks, the melody speaks. But this is not some sort of rhetoric: every note he plays on the piano is in the first person singular. And the world which opens up in the wake of his playing is infinitely rich in shades, episodes, and in questions just as much as in answers."
His concerts for two pianos, four hands, with his one-time pupil, Zoltán Kocsis, were followed with extraordinary interest and had great success. He performed with many famous chamber musicians and orchestras; the discs of some of these concerts were preserved by Hungarian Radio. These, and the few recordings he made are highly valued by those who know the art of Ferenc Rados.
J. M.