Deaths on January 15

Georges Cziffra, Hungarian-French pianist and composer (b. 1921)

György Cziffra (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈɟørɟ ˈt͡sifrɒ]; 5 November 1921 – 15 January 1994), also known as Georges Cziffra and George Cziffra, was a Hungarian-French virtuoso pianist and composer. He is considered to be one of the greatest virtuoso pianists of the twentieth century. Among his teachers was István Thomán, who was a favourite pupil of Franz Liszt.He became a French citizen in 1968. Cziffra is known for his recordings of works of Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin and Robert Schumann, and also for his technically demanding arrangements of several orchestral works for the piano, including Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee and Johann Strauss II's The Blue Danube.Cziffra left a sizeable body of recordings. In recent years, dozens of private recordings from various sources have surfaced online, on YouTube. The non-profit short-run record label Zenith Classical is in the process of making Cziffra's private recordings available on CD.