Christina Kiss in Her Own Words, and in the Media

Selected Interiews and Full Articles Below

An exclusive interview with Christina Kiss from Piano and Keyboard Magazine.

Title: Kiss Tells

“I love challenges,” Hungarian pianist Christina Kiss says by way of explaining why is she under took a commitment to perform Liszts complete works for piano in a seven-year series of 35 recitals at (Carnegie Hall’s) Weill Hall in New York. Currently in its third season, Kiss’ Liszt cycle has attracted considerable praise, and she reports that audience members regularly fly in from Japan and Australia just to hear her latest installment. Liszt is a natural choice for the 34-year-old Kiss. “When I was a little kid I always loved Liszt, and I felt very close to him, maybe because I am Hungarian. I’ve played a lot of Liszt ever since I could reach an octave. And when I studied at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, my teachers stressed Liszt.”

Kiss, whose primary teachers were György Sándor and Kornél Zempléni, completed her studies at the Academy and at Juilliard. With more than two dozen prizes from international competitions under her belt, it’s no wonder she has developed a very positive attitude. “I don’t give up easily,” she says. Talking with Kiss (Who has officially dropped her first name because “for some reason everybody remembers just the Kiss”), One gets an impression of charming eccentricity, fearless ambition, and disarming self-assuredness. She reminds one of the “Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Beautiful” ads. “I rarely practice more than two hours,” she admits. “I don’t need to. I learned the 12 Transcendental Etudes in three days. When I played them in my second Liszt recital, I received one of my best reviews from the New York Times. I know that a lot of people have problems with Liszt, because of the tremendous sound and the octaves. The octaves can actually break some players, but they are very easy for me. I can reach an octave and three notes. To tell you the truth, my hand is not big, but it’s very stretchable. When I was about 12, I got the nickname ‘rubber hands.’”

The most difficult of lists work so far, she reports, have been his transcriptions of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, followed closely by that of the Fifth. “The combination of Beethoven and Liszt is really demanding,” she explains. Although she may perform all nine of the symphonies in one special concert, she usually programs each symphony transcription with shorter, lesser-known slow pieces. Balancing programs, she says, is essential—and exacting. Kiss’ concerts are presented by Encore International Artists Management—which, it turns out, is her husband, pianist and composer Andre Liigand. They both practice late at night in their New Jersey home, With it’s three grand pianos and one upright. Kiss normally practice is between midnight and 2 AM. “During the day I am teaching and doing errands and promoting the Liszt Cycle. Andrea and I are very supportive each of each other. He is a Chopin specialist, so we’re both very romantic people.”

In more ways than one. The couple met at Barcelona’s Maria Canals International Piano Competition in 1979, when Kiss won first prize. “I was contestant number 50 and he was number 51. The moment we looked at each other we knew that was it. We gazed in each other’s eyes for about two minutes, talked for about half a minute, and then he said, ‘I would like to marry you.’ I said yes.”

When Kiss began her Liszt cycle, she recalls, “People didn’t take it that seriously. But then by word of mouth the audience started getting larger.” A turning point came when the New York Times proclaimed, “Kiss has the technique, the temperament and the stamina that the project requires.” She started to receive requests to perform selections from the cycle outside of New York and to play for radio and television. “I really feel I’m helping Liszt’s reputation,” she explains. “Whenever people hear ‘Liszt’ they always think of the octaves and fast passages instead of the really beautiful inner self.”

Kiss claims that her steady diet of more than one thousand works of last year after year is anything but monotonous. “There is so much variety,” she says. “Because he wrote so many transcriptions—of Schubert, Wagner, Brahms, and operas by Verdi and Rossini and Bellini—it’s like playing ten different composers at the same time. I’m getting to the inner Liszt, the more tender Liszt, the religious Liszt. Everybody’s afraid to play those pieces; they were the audience is going to fall asleep. But I have noticed that the slow pieces are the crowdpleasers.”

Kiss is already considering future projects, such as a complete Rachmaninoff cycle or alternating cycles of Chopin and Liszt. “I have about 80 percent of all the Chopin done, and about 70 percent of Bartók. But Liszt is my first love. I feel like a pioneer. Every morning I get up happy. There’s always something new to do.”

-Sarah Cahill

Article from The Star-Ledger

Pianist Christina Kiss Displays Awesome Promise

New York-Christina Kiss, the youthful and altogether extraordinary Hungarian pianist, returned to Lincoln Center on Sunday to play Chopin in Alice Tully Hall. Her program consisted of the four Scherzi and Twelve Etudes from Op.10 and Op. 25. The performance may not have offered everything that an evening of Chopin ought to offer, but it left no question as to the musical and technical stature of the performer.

Christina Kiss appears to be destined for a major international career. She ranks among the most gifted pianists this listener has heard in 15 years of reviewing.

A scholarship student of Gyorgy Sandor at the Juilliard School, Kiss is by no means unknown in the music world. The pianist has appeared as soloist with the Cincinnati Symphony and the orchestras of Budapest and Barcelona, and in recital throughout Europe and the United States. She has won competitions and awards. But she has yet to break out of the pack of promising young talents in the decisive way that her gifts deserve.

What this pianist offered on Sunday was playing in the grand manner, playing almost too grand for the essentially poetic nature of much of the music she played. Her Chopin resounded with the theatricality of Liszt and dazzled with the Kaleidoscopic colors of Rachaninoff. In her hands, Chopin sang, but operatically.

Yet no one could deny that her playing had majesty. Indeed, Christina Kiss demonstrated a sovereign command of the keyboard, a technique that appeared to acknowledge no difficulties. One could complain that like so many Juilliard pianists, Kiss played too loud and too fast. But the tone was always brimming with color and expression; there was no mindless banging of the sort that spells J-u-i-l-l-i-a-r-d. She can produce and sustain breathtaking pianissimi as ethereal as a mist rising off a lake, she can also make flames blaze from the keyboard.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of her technique is its clarity. There was nothing hidden, muffled or smudged in Kiss’s playing; every note, even in prestissimo passages, was crystal clear. The lines were etched in silver, the inner voices in gold. This pianist has fingers like the late Glenn Gould, each one with its own little brain. Her reading of the Etude No. 4 in C Sharp minor, Op. 10, has to be heard to be believed.

Everything was played with brilliance and sympathy; indeed, hers was Chopin with heart on sleeve. But the very best playing of all, the token of the artistry to which Christina Kiss can rise, came in some of the simple, slow and dreamy places. Such as the “snowfall” passages of the C Sharp minor scherzo, the lyric section of the E Major scherzo (gloriously sung!), and the searching questions of the Etude No. 7 in C Sharp minor, Op. 25 (this was deep playing).

-Michael Redmond, The Star-Ledger

Full New York Times article on Miss Kiss:

Christina Kiss The line between bravery and foolhardiness may be a thin one, and undertaking to perform the complete solo piano works of Liszt — from memory — in several dozen recitals might easily fall on either side. Christina Kiss, a pianist who was born in Budapest and has won prizes at several international competitions, undertook this project in 1990 and has so far made it through about 550 works, leaving enough to keep her busy, she estimates, through 2015 (a decade beyond her original projection). Ms. Kiss has not listed a program for her recital tomorrow but at this point, more than 30 installments into the series, it scarcely matters. More to the point, Ms. Kiss has the bravura technique and imagination to make this mammoth project work, and if you’re a Liszt fancier, this is clearly the place to be. Tomorrow afternoon at 2, Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall. (212 247-7800. tickets: $35 to $45.

-Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, 2004

Full New York Times Interview and article on Miss Kiss

Christina Kiss, Pianist,Weill Recital hall

Sunday afternoon was an opportunity to hear how Christina Kiss’s Liszt project has developed. Two seasons ago, Ms. Kiss undertook to play all of Liszt’s piano music; the 35 recitals, five of them this season, will run to 1997. SUnday’s experience would indicate a young pianist (she is a veteran of the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, the Juilliard School and many competitions) with both the temperament and the stamina for such a very big job.

Ms. Kiss makes a robust tone on the piano; her musical instinct are sound, and although everything was not note-perfect (given the problems, no reasonable listener would expect them to be) she was fully in control of the proceedings. The afternoon was mostly a showcase for the transcription of Beethovens Ninth Symphony. It is basically undoctored transferral used by liszt to advertise the work in an age of no recordings and few orchestra concerts. Ms. Kiss never gave in to the extreme and often awkward technical difficulties here. Cast in pianistic form, Beethoven’s obsessive use of small ideas was underline double.

Elsewhere Ms. Kiss played Five Piano Pieces from 1865. They are on a relatively modest scale and all are filled with interest. The “Valse d’Adèle” wed ballroom charm with liszt’s bag of virtuoso tricks. Ms. Kiss resumes on December 13.

Bernard Holland, The New York Times

Full New York Post article on miss kiss

Nothing to fear

Advice from colleagues and friends can be very important in shaping a musical program, especially for a New York Debut. It was the illustrious André Watts who suggested to 23-year-old Budapest-born pianist Christina Kiss that she play an all-Hungarian program at Tully Hall the other night. Miss Kiss, who was the 1980 Grand prize Winner of the American Music Scholarship Association’s International Piano Competition and who impressed many connoisseurs with her playing at the recent Van Cliburn Competition, devoted half her program to Bartók and half to Liszt even though her repertory extends from Scarlatti to Schoenberg. She tackled everything she played with the fearlessness of a football linebacker. Not even the Liszt Sonata held any terros for her. She has the talent, temperament and technique for a major career.

-Robert Kimball

The Gazette, Greenwich, Connecticut

Hungarian Pianist Intrigues Audience

Sunday afternoon found a talented Hungarian-born pianist, Christina Kiss, performing at Cole Auditorium in the Greenwich Library. She was a semi-finalist in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition of 1981, having won first prize the previous year in the Cincinnati International Piano Competition, sponsored by the American Piano Scholarship Association.

Her Greenwich concert intrigued her audience with indications of her former Budapest background where she began studying at the age of eight. She had won prize after prize abroad before coming to America. The pianist brought a combined foreign and American approach to her playing with a certain abruptness of rendition, giving a somewhat hurried impression.

Her opening Scarlatti Sonatas consisted of the D minor, E major, and G major, in which she exhibited exuberance and sparkling technique. Beethoven’s Sonata in E major, opus 109, came next. The pianist showed in all three movements musicality and technical mastery, worthy of the composition. Kiss then turned her attention to Chopin’s Scherzo No. 1 in B minor, opus 20, which she played with assurance and sensitivity.

Completing the first part of the program in triumph, came Liszt’s Rhapsody No. 14, played in true Hungarian style. It was filled with spectacular chords and pyrotechnics which Kiss found easy to accomplish for her listeners’ delight. The Rhapsody is also written as the famous Hungarian Fantasy for piano and orchestra which pianists love to schedule. This pianist has a total of 20 concertos in her existing repertoire.

The last half of the program was entirely devoted to Brahms’ Great Sonata in F minor, opus 5, with its five movements. Her powerful chords and expressive softer passages won great appreciation from her audience. As an encore, Kiss responded with a movement from a Bartok suite, which was quite stirring.

Her sponsors, the Pannonia-Hungarian club proudly accomplished their goal of fostering the Hungarian cultural heritage in presenting this artist.

Ray Yates, The Gazette, Greenwich Connecticut

Greenwich News: "Kiss Receives Raves"

Christina Kiss, a young Hungarian-born pianist with a formidable technique, gave a brilliant recital last Sunday afternoon at Cole Auditorium. In a program ranging from Scarlatti to Brahms, she astonished the audience with her fire and poetry, proportion and richness of tone. Particularly impressive were the Scherzo No. 1 of Chopin, and Liszt’s Rhapsody No. 14, which were full of feeling, excitement and superb musicianship. She set off rockets in the Liszt. The three Scarlatti sonatas were sharply focused. Beethoven’s Sonata in E (Op. 109) had a controlled passion that was good. The monumental Brahms sonata in F minor (Op. 5) had beutiful sonorities and phrasing, and a sense of design. For an encore, Miss Kiss played Bartok and set off more rockets.

Marion H. White, Greenwich News

The Cincinnati enquirer

Hungarian woman wins piano contest!

Hungarian pianist Christina Kiss, 22, won the $5,00 grand prize as the American Music Scholarship Association closed its week-long festival and competition Friday night at the Palace Theater. Eric Himay, 21, a student at the Juilliard School of Music, placed second. Tied for third place were Eric Marek Chwastek, 25, of Poland and Angela Cheng, 21, of Canada. Each performer played a portion of a concerto accompanied by an orchestra directed by Evan Whallon, conductor of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra. In addition to the $5,000 prize, at stake was a solo debut recital at New York’s Lincoln Center.

Kiss’s interpretation of the first movement of Liszt’s Concerto No. 1 was both powerful and poetic. Her playing has a natural joy and exuberance kept under control by impressive technique. She was by far the most exciting of the four and appeared willing to take risks, a characteristic extremely rare in a competition.

-Nancy Malitz, Enquirer Music Critic

Full article and interview from the star-ledger

The Star-Ledger

Christina Kiss: Complete Pianist

Jersey Musician will play Chopin at Lincoln Center

It was easier for Christina Kiss to get to Lincoldn center than to get to the altar for her wedding. Her story is the very stuff of Hollywood, except that it happens to be true. The award-winning artist from North Bergen, hailed in the national press as a “Painist of Distinction” praised for “elegance beyond the call of duty,” performs Chopin’s four scherzos and Twelve Etudes (from Op. 10 and Op 25) on Sunday at 8 p.m. in Alice tully Hall, Lincoln Center. Now here’ the Christina Kiss screenplay: Under the sunny skies of Barcelona, a beautiful Hungarian pianist named Christina Kiss meets a handsome American pianist named Andres Liigand. They are both in Spain competing in the Maria Canals International Competition (cue guitar music). They fall in love (cue the violins). Then introduce the harsh realities of international politics (cue anything by Schoenberg). The couple wants to marry, but it is no simple matter for a citizen of a Soviet Bloc state to marry a non-comrade. Had Christina chosen to tie the knot then and there, either in Spain or the United States, her governement would have considered the marriage null and void, and Christina a defector. The pianist loves her native land, and she loves her family. She does not wish to spend the rest of her life exiled from both. So the couple decides to do the right thing. Putting their romance on the back burner, Andres approaches his government, Christina approaches hers. The couple flies to Budapest. Papers go back and forth between goverments for two months—which is of course reckless haste in bureaucratic terms (cue the sound of pencils being pushed). FInally, Andres and Christina become husband and wife in an ancient Roman Catholic church in Buadpest, high on a hill overlooking one of the great cities of Europe, the beautiful blue Dabue glistening below (cue wedding bells followed by Ave Maria on cimbalom).

No, the story is not over. Then comes the honeymoon (cue fall orchestra, love theme from Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet”), a tour by train through Yugoslavia, Italy, and Austria, and the return to Hungary, where the couple becoemes entangled in red tape. The Hungarians will not permit Andres to re-enter Hungary. The Yugoslavs will not permit Christina to remain in Yugoslavia. Then ensues a seperation, during which Andres goes paper-chasing and Christina, sleeping on a bench in a border train station, has no idea where her new husband is (cue the slow movement from Bartok’s Divertmento for Strings. Fade out from train station, fade into New York skyline. Andres and Christina have come to live in the United States (Cue Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue). Fade out from skyline, fade in to the Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack, six years later. Christina takes the oath of allegiance and becomes a citizen of the United States (cue “The Star Spangled Banner,” fade out with fireworks).

There’s no way to resist so romantic a story, but there’s a danger in it: All the hearts and flowers may end up smothering the really important thing—the music. The fact is, Christina Kiss is a remarkable pianist, the winner of numerous international prizes and competitions. But what most impresses knowledgable listeners about the artist is that she appears to be a complete musician already, even as she keeps paying her dues by pursuing advanced study in the Juilliard School with Gyorgy Sandor. “I had great teachers. When I was 8, I was taking four hours of piano instruction a week. One teacher concentrated on sound, the other on technique, so I had both together. I was never pushed. My mother teaches piano, but she never pushed me. “People ask me how I developed a ‘big’ technique and a ‘big’ sound. The only thing I can tell them is that I’ve always had them. I never really have difficulties, technically. I never play scales or exercises, any of that stuff. At 8 in the morning, I will jump right into Chopin.

“Also, I’m fortunate that I never have to memorize. The music just comes,” Chritina said. The music that “just comes” to Christina includes some 30 concertos ranging from Mozart and Beethoven, to Liszt, Chopin, Brahms, Ravel, Prokofiev, and Bartok, and “eight or nine” full recital programs. “I can be ready for anything in two or three days, but I prefer to explore one composer at a time. This year it’s Chopin. Last year, Liszt. The year before that, Brahms. Next year, Rachmaninoff. I played Bernstein’s ‘Touches’ and some pieces by Persichetti, but otherwise, I haven’t really looked into the American repertory,” the pianist said.

Christina does not like jazz, but she is a fan of American pop ballads. “I love Elvis Presley,” she said. Demure and rather shy in person, Christina said, “I only feel good when I’m on stage. I just love it. The more pressure on me, the better I play. The bigger the audience, the better.” The pianist, who is not yet under management, is looking forward to sharing a series of recital programs with her husband in the opening months of 1988. Of Estonian heritage, Andres hails from Franklin lakes and is a graduate of Westminster Choir College, Princeton. Ticket’s to Sunday’s Chopin recital are $10, $15, and $17.50 at the Alice Tully Hall box office.