Péter Eötvos, the final nice Hungarian composer, dies at 80 | Culture | EUROtoday

It appears that unhealthy information tends to cluster collectively. On the identical day, yesterday March 23, we obtained the unhappy information of the loss of life of the good Italian pianist Maurizio Pollini and the composer and conductor Péter Eötvos. I’m going to speak in regards to the second, absolutely much less identified to most of the people, even though, with him, one of many biggest names in European music passes away on the age of 80, a kind of personalities who transmute with their period till they outline it and that depart us an incredible void.

Pierre Boulez, the legendary French composer and conductor, outlined Eötvos as one of many exportable Hungarians, like Béla Bartók, Zoltan Kodaly, Giörgy Ligeti, Giörgy Kurtág or Georg Solti. As it’s an outdated expression, he didn’t level out that he was maybe the final of that saga able to growing the inventive features of a rustic to the highest, leaving a void if there is no such thing as a substitute. I don't know that troublesome nation that’s as we speak's Hungary effectively, not even within the musical area that corresponds to me, however I don't consider anybody able to changing Eötvos on that listing of greats.

Péter Eötvos was born in Transylvania on January 2, 1944, that complicated area that, after the partition after the First World War, grew to become a part of Romania, regardless of its Hungarian majority. Eötvos at all times identified that his native musical language was that of the Székely group, a language that he shared with the extraordinary legacy of his mom, a pianist, or his multi-instrumentalist grandfather within the wealthy native custom.

After his musical research in Budapest, he obtained a diploma in composition and, as he confessed, he started conducting orchestras in order that he wouldn’t be enrolled within the military. He will need to have been superb at it, as a result of he instantly left the nation with a formidable musical backpack.

In the mid-sixties he arrived in Germany, aged 22. He outlined that second as the start of the second a part of his life. Orchestral conducting and composition merge and permit him to immerse himself in new musical languages ​​with outstanding ease. A video by the artist and director Judit Kele that circulates on YouTube, The seventh door, reveals him with a cordial and joking Stockhausen, and a snug and acquainted Eötvos in some troublesome rehearsals. Stockhausen speaks of Eötvos with actual affection: “Péter is probably the most peculiar director in the world. He knows how to direct everything, especially because he thinks like a composer, that he can get into the smallest details of a very complex score and make it audible through his very personal technique. I would say that he is loyal, first of all, but, in addition, he is always in a good mood and likes nature, he loves children and is never tired, he is a charming man.”

He grew to become accustomed to all of the avant-garde methods and made them his personal from a directorial type that was uncommon in these years amongst those that opted for modernity. He quickly made himself observed and in 1978 Pierre Boulez commissioned him to carry out the inaugural live performance on the Pompidou Center and the new child Ensemble Intercontemporain de Paris (EIC). And, after the efficiency, he chooses him as the top of this hopeful specialised orchestra for the subsequent 13 years. Eötvos was then 34 years outdated. These are years by which it’s identified that he composed, however the route absorbs him. Starting in 1991, upon leaving the EIC, he started a frenetic profession in three instructions: as a conductor he started to collaborate with essentially the most prestigious orchestras on the earth, however it was as a composer that Eötvos exploded. In 1993 alone he signed six works in a development that reached its end result in 1997, when he introduced what was his second opera, however which achieved vital notoriety: Three sistersabout Chekhov's play.

Shortly earlier than, in 1993, Eötvos introduced a chunk devoted to Franz Zappa, for whom he had huge admiration. Zappa had not too long ago died and shortly earlier than he had invited him to Los Angeles to current a live performance devoted to Varèse for whom the rocker was devoted having begun his musical profession with Ionisation, the well-known solo percussion piece that had set a pattern initially of the century. The music that Eötvos devoted to Zappa was titled Psalm 151 In memoriam Franz Zappa.

It is one work amongst many, however it confirms the flexibility that Eötvos has proven in his lengthy profession; at all times oscillating between avant-garde and fashionable airs, maybe as a consequence of that Transylvanian heritage collected from his grandparents; between orchestra conducting and creation; between a theatricality at all times current even in his purely instrumental works; between electroacoustic music and instrumental sophistication; a dedication to opera that led him to signal 9 titles; and, above all, between each features of his profession and a singular pedagogical dedication. Proof of that is that, in 1991, the 12 months by which he left the EIC's management, he based the International Eötvos Institute and Foundation, devoted to younger conductors and composers. From 1992 to 1998 he taught on the Hochchule für Musik in Karlsruhe and later taught on the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne. In latest many years, Eötvos has supervised musical creation and route on the Reina Sofía School in Madrid, being the very best stage reference of this establishment created by Paloma O'Shea, to which, by the best way, he devoted a brief piece for violin in 2015.

Among his quite a few awards, the final two stand out: the Goethe Medal of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2018 and the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge award in 2021.