János Balázs was born on 19 September, 1988, into a family of famous musicians. His first teacher was his father, and afterwards he started his official teching in the Járdányi Pál Music School under the direction of piano teacher Erika Becht (Mrs Hornyánszky). After only a couple of months’s study, at the age of nine he won the first prize, and many special prizes at the National Piano Competition in Nyíregyháza, Hungary, and since then he has given concerts at home and abroad. In 1998 he was invited to the Graz Festival of Young Artist. In 2002 he was admitted to the Exceptional Talent children’s class of the Music Academy, where he is now a fourth-year student, and his teacher is Gyöngyi Keveházi.
At the age of 14 he performed Franz Liszt’s Piano Concerto in A major, under the baton of András Deák, with the BM-Duna Symphony Orchestra. He has already won many competitions, including first prize at the György Cziffra Piano Competition in Baden in 2004, where he was the youngest participant. In 2005 he won the first prize in the International Franz Liszt Piano Competition, awarded unanimously by the jury, and thus became the youngest Liszt competition winner in Hungary. After winning the competition he was invited to the Franz Liszt Piano Festival in Sopron, the Music Days Festival in Pécs and Mosonmagyaróvár, the Debrecen Spring Festival, the Frederic Chopin Festival in the Czech Republic, the Freiburg Music Festival, the Munich Spring Festival, and the Vienna Bösendorfer Festival. At the gala concert for the 130th anniversary jubilee of the Budapest Music Academy he performed alongside world stars. In November 2005 he recorded his first solo disc under the auspices of BMC, entitled Workds by Liszt. In 2005 he won yet another competition, the Maruach Piano Competition.
He has taken part in master classes given by Dimitri Bashkirov, Marian Lapsansky, Noel Flores, Martin Huges, Péter Frankl, Sándor Falvai, Jenő Jandó and Gergely Bogányi. His repertoire is very wide, stretching from the Baroque through Romanticism to the 20th century.