Pleszkán Frigyes, rest in peace

 UPDATE 07/03/2011:

According to Ferenc Gayer, bassist of the Pleszkan Trio, Frigyes Pleszkan committed suicide. In a recent interview he told a gossip tabloid the followings:

"He had a dream of becoming an excellent, well-known, world-wide musician. Not much came true of these dreams. I think, he can also be blamed for this. In his early 30s, when his fellow musicians stared to pick on him, saying he did not have a style of his own, he moved to Switzerland and exchanged concert halls to clubs of hotels, he became a bar pianist.

We did not really know about his life in Switzerland, we did not even know the places he played at. He never really liked to talk about this. People, who knew him say that Pleszkán Frigyes was a kind, sensitive, helpful person who lived for music. He could play the piano for hours at social event, he enjoyed being watched and listened to. Everyone was shocked to learn how brutally he turned against himself. We last talked two weeks before his death.  He was a bit blue, but not as much that would make you realize, tragedy is coming. Only after his death do I realize how little I knew about him. It is shocking to see what has happened to him, my goal now is to preserve the memory of Frici - Ferenc Gayer said. "

On the 14th of February Frigyes Pleszkan (Pleszkán Frigyes in Hungarian) passed away suddenly, leaving behind a lot of his dreams that now will never come true. Pleszkán was the most virtuoso Hungarian jazz pianist, a unique talent and one of my personal favourites. He is a perfect example of how even the most talented musicians might not gain enough exposure throughout a lifetime.

When I heard the news, I started to search around to find out details about his recent activities and I was shocked about how little information is available about him. Furthermore, almost nothing is available in English, apart from some incomplete discographies. I have collected materials from various resources to draw a quick picture of Pleszkan Frigyes for non-Hungarian fans. But first, let's have a listen to a fairly recent recording of Pleszkán Frigyes. The following YouTube excerpt is from an Oscar Peterson Tribute night, Frici (as close friends and colleagues called him) plays his own version of “Feelings” in the style of Oscar Peterson.

It is interesting to note that the otherwise well-known and talented double bass player Ferenc Gajer makes a quite audible mistake by mixing up the verse and the chorus part of this well-known jazz standard at 2:27.

The life of Frigyes Pleszkan (Pleszkán Frigyes)

The story of the most virtuoso Hungarian pianist started at the small city of Csorna on the 1st of July, 1959., 50 years later, when asked to talk about himself, he started the interview with the following, simple sentences:

"Hi, I am Frigyes Pleszkán. I was eight when I first played the piano and I had my first concert when I was 11."

It was in these very early years that Oscar Peterson was giving a concert in Hungary. While Pleszkan did not attend the concert, one of the national radio stations aired the recording of the concert which eventually was taped by Frigyes. He learned the songs Oscar Peterson played at that concert by ear and applied with these songs to the Jazz Deparment of the Béla Bartók Secondary School of Music. He got admitted straight away.

Playing like Oscar Peterson at the age of 14 made a huge impress on everybody around him. Considered as an extraordinary talent, a true prodigy, he performed solo at the Pori Jazz Festival in 1976, already at the age of 17. Along with Herbie Hancock, Stan Getz and John McLauglin, one more line appeared on posters and tickets of the festival: "unkarilainen pianon ihmelapsi Frigyes Pleszkán”, which stands for "Hungarian pianist prodigy child, Pleszkán Frigyes".

Janos Gonda, director of the Jazz Department, and the mastermind behind jazz movements and jazz life in general in Hungary in the 1970-1980s, wrote the following note about his student:

"His diligence, humility, and his internal discipline manifesting in his piano playing are truly unique, a real rarity. He plays the piano on a wide spectrum,c overing everything from rock to traditional jazz. His memory for music is excellent, which enables him to reproduce the contents of a full album in detail after the first listening. It may sound strange, but theoretically speaking, technically unsolvable task does not exist for him."

Pleszkán began his career as a prodigy, something that could have been enough for world-wide fame and life-long success, had he not been born into Hungary. Not being favoured by the ruling regim during the years of Soviet ruling, after much struggle he escaped to the safe but less glamorous life of a successful bar pianist, playing and living in Western Europe.

On a personal note, one of my relatives celebrated funerals in the 1980s, where Pleszkan was playing regularly the piano music for almost no money at all. I think this clearly exemplifies the life Pleszkán was trying to leave behind when he decided to move to Switzerland. The legend says, he was always improvising to much during the funerals :-)

Pleszkán remained in his exile until the middle of the 1990s, when he started to give concerts more and more often again in Hungary. He never fully returned to Hungary though and lived mostly in Switzerland until his very recent death on the 14th of February, 2011.

Works of Pleszkán Frigyes

• 1978 – 1979: member of the band 'Lama'
• Early 1980s: formed the Pleszkán trio with Németh Tamás on drums and Gajer Ferenc on the double bass.
• 1985: recorded an album together with Gonda Janos and John Richard Kruza
• 1995: First solo album released, called Fingerprints, 10 songs out of which 5 was his own composition
• 1996: Second solo album released, called Second Step, featuring only his own compositions
• 1997: Third solo album released, called Pearls In Boogie Shell
• 1999: Fourth solo album released, called Magic Hands

In recent years, he was experimenting with jazz improvisations over classical compositions. and was planning to release a CD of these experiments. No details of his death are known at this date, news only reported about his sudden, unexpected pass away.

 R.I.P.  Pleszkán Frigyes

Resources (you will need a translating service, such as Google Translate to read these Hungarian articles): 

• http://regiolapok.hu/a_vereben_van_a_dzsessz
• http://www.jbsz.hu/component/content/article/54-ezredveg/764-pleszkan-ujjlenyomatai.html
• http://zene.hu/20110216_gyasz_elhunyt_a_kivalo_magyar_zenesz_pleszkan_Frigyes