Although she has an extensive repertoire her main strength and focus is on the Classical and Romantic repertoire. A prolific recording artist she made more than 40 CDs, ranging from Mozart to Bartók. Her recording of the complete Mozart Piano Sonatas was met with great critical acclaim: “Sensational! Würtz’ pianistic finesse, her inclination to let the phrases breathe and “sing”, her superb and fastidious equilibrium, and, above all, her inclination to leave well enough alone and let the music speak for itself, represent “centric” Mozart tradition at its attractive best.” (Harris Goldsmith in International Record Review). After a concert with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Bernard Haitink the Boston Globe wrote: “Würtz, who has the best recording of the complete Mozart piano sonatas to her credit, played with the same elegant, spirited style, command of dynamics, and lambent tone that is so admirable on the CD’s”. Another highly successful recording project is of the piano works by Robert Schumann, a composers with whom she has a strong affinity. Jed Distler wrote on Classicstoday.com: “Würtz performances unquestionably hold their turf alongside the reference versions. In Kreisleriana for instance she matches Radu Lupu’s poetry and sweep, while imparting more shape and meaning…Klára Würtz’s will be the finest complete Schumann cycle to have been recorded by one pianist.
Though not claiming to be a “specialist” Klára has a special place in her heart for Franz Schubert. Richard Dyer (Boston Globe) speaks of the “inner radiance of her sound”, while Fanfare Classical Magazine rates her Impromptus recording “in the exalted company of Schnabel, Brendel, Lupu, Zimerman and Perahia..this is very natural and distinctive music-making at a very high level” . Her other solo recordings include works by Bartók, Kodály, Janácek, Liszt, Chopin and Debussy. She recorded piano concertos by Mozart, Schumann, Rachmaninoff, Ravel and Bartók. An avid chamber music player she recorded the Beethoven and Brahms violin sonatas with Kristóf Baráti (“Reference recording” according to the leading German newpaper), Beethoven’s cello sonatas with Timora Rosler, Kodály cello sonatas with István Várdai, and piano trios by Schubert and Mendelssohn with the Klaviertrio Amsterdam.
From early childhood on Klára was immersed in music. From her 5-th year she joined the famous Hungarian radio & Television Children’s Choir, whit which she made extensive international tours. At seventeen she entered the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest where she studied with such iconic teachers as Zoltán Kocsis, Ferenc Rados and György Kurtág. Later she received scholarship from András Schiff for his chamber music courses in Prussia Cove, UK. In 1985 she won the First Prize in the Ettore Pozzoli Competition in Milan. In 1988 she was a prize winner in the Dublin International Competition and the only one to carry away a contract with an international agency: she signed up with Columbia Artist Management in New York and played over a hundred concerts in the USA and Canada, at the Ravinia Festival and the Kennedy Center in Washington, with a.o. the Czech Philharmonic under Jiri Belohlavek. She played in the International Piano Festival of Williamtown, the Newport Festival, the Carnegie Hall, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, La Roque d’Anthéron (France), at the Mozarteum during the Salzburg Festival, with the Budapest Festival Orchestra under Iván Fischer. She played chamber music with Janine Jansen, Dimitri Makhtin, Alexander Kniazev, the Pavel Haas Quartet and conductor Bernard Haitink, Theodore Kuchar, Marco Boni, Dirk Vermeulen, Justus Frantz.
Klára Würtz teaches at the Conservatory of Utrecht, and she lives with her husband and daughter in Amsterdam.
