János Ferencsik

János Ferencsik is a Hungarian conductor. He was educated at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest, where he studied composition with László Laita. He began his conducting career in 1927 as an assistant at the Budapest State Opera. He worked with outstanding conductors such as Bruno Walter and Wilhelm Furtwängler, and in the early 1930s he was an assistant to Arturo Toscanini at the Bayreuth Festival, which influenced Ferencsik's creative style.

After the end of World War II, Ferencsik conducted the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1945 to 1952 and was simultaneously the principal guest conductor of the Vienna State Opera from 1948 to 1950. Then, from 1957 to 1974, Ferencsik conducted the Budapest State Opera, from 1952 until the end of his life he conducted the Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra, and from 1960 to 1967 he was also the director of the Budapest Philharmonic. In the post-war years he often performed in Vienna, in 1957 he played for the first time in Great Britain, and in 1962 in the USA. Honored (1952), then People's (1954) Artist of the Hungarian People's Republic. János is closer to the works of B. Bartók, Z. Kodály, F. Liszt, as well as to the Viennese classics.