Hungarian evening

Noemi Sallai – clarinet

Aspiring Hungarian clarinetist Noémi Sallai has been selected as the sole clarinet fellow in Carnegie Hall’s prestigious music program, Ensemble Connect for the 2018-2020 season. A devoted chamber musician, Ms. Sallai has spent her summers at the Crescendo Summer Institute in Hungary, the Sarasota Music Festival in Florida and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, where she collaborated with such renowned artists as Charles Neidich, Frank Morelli and Peter Frankl. As the winner of the 2018 PRISMA Concerto Competition in Canada, Ms. Sallai had the opportunity to play in the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, in Russia. An enthusiast of orchestral music, she went on tour with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, conducted by Iván Fischer, to Edinburgh, Budapest and New York participating in their production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Ms. Sallai appeared as a clarinetist in such renowned groups as the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Binghamton Symphony Orchestra, The Princeton Symphony Orchestra, the Symphony in C,  the Juilliard Symphony Orchestra, the New Juilliard Ensemble and the Axiom contemporary music ensemble. Ms. Sallai also participated in the Zoltán Kodály World Orchestra conducted by the renowned Hungarian pianist and conductor Tamás Vásáry.

In 2019 she won the Golden Medal with High Distinction at the Manhattan International Music Competition in New York and is also a winner of prizes at competitions in Hungary, Italy, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada and the USA.

Born and raised in Hungary, Ms. Sallai began her musical studies at the age of eight and started to play the clarinet at the age of eleven.  She completed her Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Arts degrees at Bard College and holds a Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School of Music.

​Alexandra Balog-piano

Winner of the 2017 Béla Bartók International Piano Competition in Graz, Alexandra Balog has since established herself as one of the most compelling pianists of her generation. She is a Fulbright Scholar, received Hungary’s most prestigious recognition for young artists, the Junior Príma Prize (2023), and was named to Forbes Hungary’s “30 under 30” list (2024).

As a soloist, she has performed with orchestras in Hungary and the UK and has  appeared in prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall (New York), the Tchaikovsky Conservatory (Moscow), the Centro Nacional de las Artes (Mexico City), and La Chapelle Musicale (Brussels), with performances across Europe, the United States, Mexico, and Ecuador, as well as major cultural centers in Asia.  In the 2025/26 season, she will appear at Salle Cortot (Paris), the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Mexico City), and in Budapest, London, Tokyo, Singapore, Beijing, and Shanghai.

Alexandra Balog is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Altalena Artists Collective, an international community of outstanding young musicians dedicated not only to artistic excellence but also to the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of performers. The Collective presents a series of festivals, academies, and masterclasses, most prominently the Altalena Music Festival in Hungary and Tuscany, along with the Altalena Summer Academy.

Alexandra graduated with distinction from the Royal Academy of Music in London under Ian Fountain (2019), was a scholar of the Hungarian Academy of Arts’ three-year program, and earned her Artist Diploma at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz with Markus Schirmer (2023). Currently, as a Fulbright Scholar, she is pursuing the Advanced Performance Studies program at Bard College Conservatory of Music, studying with Rieko Aizawa.