Cimbalom
Alex Udvary, Cimbalom
Alex Udvary began his musical career studying the piano at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and is an accomplished pianist. He learned the cimbalom from his father. Among cimbalom players in America today, Alex Udvary is considered the best. His name is known even in Europe. Frequently, when European artists are on tour here, he is asked to accompany them.
Mr. Udvary is the only cimbalom player in America that has had a television special about the cimbalom. He was also featured on a weekly radio program. He appeared five times with the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. Lorin Maazel, then musical director of the Cleveland Orchestra, arranged several pieces in which he wrote cimbalom parts for Alex. These pieces were recorded with the Cleveland Orchestra. Alex has also performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra and made a recording of the Hary Janos by Kodaly, with Eugene Ormandy conducting. Conductor-composer Janos Kiss wrote three pieces for cimbalom and orchestra especially for Alex. Alex also performed three times with the Detroit Symphony, twice with the New Orleans symphony, and with the symphonies of Cincinnati, Tulsa, Nashville, Akron, Canton, Dayton, Youngstown, Erie, Syracuse, Macomb, La Crosse, Elkhart and many others. He was musical director for the Hungarian Theatre and Dance Company of Cleveland. He has also given numerous lectures about the cimbalom, among them at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn. He arranged and composed music both for the cimbalom and his ensemble. He composed the words and music to the ‘Vikings Fight Song’ for Cleveland State University.
Mr. Udvary was asked to perform for the Prime Minister of Hungary. He is recognized by Budapest as the premier cimbalom player in America, and rated with the ten best in the world. He recorded an album with musicians from Hungary’s prestigious State Folk Ensemble.
Aside from his concert career, Alex has also appeared at numerous clubs and some of the most elite French and Italian restaurants in the country. He is as adept at playing the piano as the cimbalom. His ability to switch from piano to the cimbalom creates a pace that is never boring. His repertoire includes American standards, show tunes, popular, classical, and the music of almost every European country. He has more than a dozen recordings to his credit.
Alex performed for: Zsa Zsa Gabor, Dwight Eisenhower, Edie Adams, Jimmy Durante, Bill Dana, Paul Lukas, Jack Carter, Mitzi Gayor, Kaye Stevens, Julie Nixon, Ella Fitzgerald, Yul Brynner, Buddy Hackett, Van Cliburn, Itzhak Perlman, producer Joseph Pasternak and others.
THE CIMBALOM:
The cimbalom is the hammered dulcimer of Hungarian folk musicians, the basis of their orchestra. The cimbalom we know today was perhaps developed in 13th C. Persia. In Iran and the Caucasus region it has remained popular to the present day, under the name of santur. The original version of the cimbalom, placed on a table and having neither legs nor damper pedal, once enjoyed popularity throughout Europe, from Austria to Britain and from Spain to Italy. In Hungary today it is call “kiscimbalom”, meaning small cimbalom. In the 1870’s Jozsef Schunda’s instrument factory in Budapest developed the modern enlarged cimbalom. Large cimbaloms stand on 4 legs, with a 4-octave chromatic range, and damper pedals like a piano. The early smaller cimbalom formed part of the earliest known folk band, that of Panna Czinka, who died in 1772. The large cimbalom is now a fundamental part of the folk band.
