János S. Darvas
was born in Santiago de Chile in 1948. His parents were Hungarian Jews who fled to South America. The family returned to their home country a few months after he was born.
From 1965 to 1969, he studied music at Budapest’s Béla Bartók Conservatory. He emigrated to Germany in 1969 and stayed in Cologne, where he studied percussion with Christoph Caskel until 1973. From 1970 to 1974, he worked with Karlheinz Stockhausen as well. His audiovisual composition “Hörfilm” premiered at the ISCM World Music Days in Bonn in 1977. He has worked as a freelance television director with a focus on classical music since 1980.
He has written and directed the following documentaries, among others:
- Mendelssohn, His Last Journey – WDR/SWF 1980
- Friedrich Gulda – A Portrait – LOFT/Bodo Kessler Film 1981
- Paderewsky – Pianist and Prime Minister – WDR 1984
- Zoltán Kocsis – A Portrait – WDR 1987
- Spoleto – Thirty Years Festival of Two Worlds – WDR 1987
- But for Women – Dr. Brahms. Johannes Brahms – Metropolitan 1996
- Antonio Pappano – A Portrait – Metropolitan 2000
- György Kurtág – Master Class – Metropolitan 2000
- Igor Stravinsky: Composer – Metropolitan 2001
- The Hungarian Touch – Idéale Audience 2002
- Paul Abraham – WDR/arte 2008
- The Genius of Haydn – WDR/arte 2009
- Coming Home – EuroArts 2011
Other key activities of János S. Darvas are multicamera productions for the screen: live broadcasts and recordings of concerts, opera and theatre performances for television, DVD, Blu-ray, cinema and the internet.
He has worked in Vienna, Salzburg, Berlin, Bayreuth, Cologne, Munich, Rome, Paris, Bruxelles, London, Madrid, Budapest, Prague, New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, Buenos Aires and Tel Aviv.