Tamás Horkay

Mgr. Tamás Horkay, PhD. is a Slovak musicologist, music critic and publicist, secondary school teacher, pianist, and organizer of musical life. He studied piano and organ at the Conservatory in Košice, followed by musicology at the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University in Bratislava, where he also earned his doctorate with a dissertation Hudobná interpretácia a Chopinova poetika (musical interpretation and Chopin’s poetics). He pursued further academic studies in Budapest and Munich. Professionally, he focuses on teaching music theory, music history, and accompanying.

Since 1993, he has been an external contributor to print and online media as a music critic and publicist. He is the author of hundreds of articles, essays, reviews, and reports for Hudobný život, Új Szó, Slovo, Súvislosti, Národná obroda, Slovak Radio, and others. He is the author of the book Musical Interpretation and Chopin’s Poetics and contributed the chapter on 19th-century piano music in Naďa Hrčková’s Dejinách hudby (History of Music, 2010).

He has presented papers at numerous musicological symposia in Bratislava, Žilina, Banská Bystrica, Graz, Regensburg, and Sátoraljaújhely. As a pianist, he has performed works by Chopin, Schubert, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Bach, Franck, Reger, Eben, Haydn, and Bartók in cities including Košice, Bratislava, Veľké Kapušany, Kráľovský Chlmec, and Sátoraljaújhely.

He is the founder and organizer of the festival Music Days of Použie and, in 2009, was awarded the “Kóta” prize by the Association of Hungarian Choirs, Orchestras, and Folk Ensembles for his contribution to musical culture. Since 2011, he has been teaching at the Jozef Adamovič Conservatory in Košice.