Edvin Marton - Biography

Biography

He was born in an area of Ukraine largely inhabited by ethnic Hungarians. He was born into a musical family and by the age of five was already learning the violin from his parents. He was eight years old when accepted into that alma mater for the most talented musicians of the Soviet Union, the Central Tchaikowsky Music School in Moscow to study under Leo Lundstrem.

He continued his studies with Eugenia Tchougaeva. He gave his first important concert at the age of twelve, with the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. At the age of seventeen he became a student at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music Budapest, in the class of Géza Kapás. He took part in a masterclass given by Ruggiero Ricci, where he won the prize for the best participant. He was also the Grand Prize winner of the International Course Competition in Berlin, after having been invited by Ruggiero Ricci. Since 1993 he has been a "young soloist" for the National Philharmonic Concert Agency in Hungary.

He has performed with almost all the main Hungarian orchestras, and given concerts in Austria, Italy, Germany and Switzerland. In May 1994 the famous violin teacher Dorothy DeLay invited him to the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado. where he gave a concert with Rohan de Silva. In New York he won a scholarship and was admitted to the class of Dorothy Delay at the Juilliard School of Music. His studies in New York at the Juilliard School of Music brought professional contacts which meant changes in his musical style. There, in one of the most revered classical music environments of Juilliard, he mingled with DJs and jumped from high level classical to what is referred today as crossover.

While still in his twenties, Marton had traveled to more than thirty countries and played in such renowned concert halls as the Berliner Philharmonie and Vienna's Konzerthaus. But he was looking for a change. A former classmate said of him, "After he graduated from the music academy the talented, jovial and rotund Lajos disappeared, only to return as a slim, easy listening, music playing Edvin Marton."

He won his chance to play on a donated Stradivarius at a competition at the Orford Arts Centre in Canada in 1996, under the artistic direction of Yuli Turovsky. The echeloned violin was lent to him "for life" by a Swiss Bank. "The violin I'm using is from 1697, it's a Stradivarius and was actually played by Paganini over 300 years ago. I won the chance to play it when I won a competition in Montreal in 1996, and now it's in Belgrade with us."