Cellist Ildikó Szabó comes from a renowned Hungarian musical family. She studied at the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest and with János Starker, Jens Peter Maintz, and Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt. She has won prizes at 16 competitions across Europe, including the 2014 International Pablo Casals Cello Competition, where she received no fewer than eight awards.
Ildikó maintains close artistic relationships with György Kurtág and Péter Eötvös. At the suggestion of her mentor Alfred Brendel, she recorded Beethoven’s complete works for cello and piano together with pianist István Lajkó. The recording was released in 2023 and nominated for the 2024 International Classical Music Awards (ICMA).
Since 2023, she has taught chamber music at the University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar, and in the summer semester of 2026 at the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin. She also teaches cello at the Julius Stern Institute.
