It must have been sometime in the mid-1980s that I first met Ferenc Rados. His former student András Schiff had invited him to come to the Open Chamber Music session at IMS Prussia Cove in Cornwall—in those days run by its founder, the great violinist and conductor Sándor Végh. (IMS was, and still is, quite a hotbed of Hungarians.) I was fascinated by Rados, of course; but it is to my shame that during the week we spent together (working on the Schubert E-flat Trio D. 929) I failed to realize that he was, in his very different way, every bit as great a musician as Végh. This only really came home to me several years later, when Rados and I taught together, also at Prussia Cove. I sat in on some of his lessons, and was mesmerized. What a mind! What profound, probing musicianship! And what a strange man…
Ferenc Rados: And Now for Something Completely Different…
Steven Isserlis on Ferenc Rados as a musician and teacher.
