Enlarge image

Péter Eötvös at a concert in Budapest in 2022

Photo: Balazs Mohai / EPA

The Hungarian composer and conductor Péter Eötvös died on Sunday in Budapest at the age of 80 after a long illness. Hungarian media reported this, citing his family. The artist, who was internationally celebrated as a master of contemporary music and was active in Germany for a long time, was inspired by Zoltán Kodály, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez.

Ideas about the cosmos preoccupied him from an early age. His opus no. 1, the piano piece “Kosmos”. Ten operas and orchestral pieces later followed with titles such as “Psychokosmos” (1993), “Seven – Memorial for the Columbia Astronauts” (2006) and “Multiversum”, premiered in October 2017 in the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie. At the same time, his music is also rooted in the traditions of folk music of Hungary and the Carpathian Basin, as with his teacher Kodály, one of the most important collectors and editors of this music.

Born on January 2, 1944 in what is now the Romanian town of Odorheiu Secuiesc in Transylvania, Eötvös took lessons from the age of 14 with Kodály (1882-1967) at the renowned Franz Liszt Music Academy in Budapest. In 1963 he received his diploma as a composer. From 1964 to 1966 he studied conducting on a scholarship at the Cologne University of Music.

While still a student of Kodály, the teenager Eötvös was in demand as a commissioned composer for the Budapest Film Factory and major Budapest theaters. Cologne, on the other hand, was a center of emerging new music in the 1960s. A new world opened up for Eötvös there. Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007) brought him into his ensemble in 1968. From 1971 to 1979 he worked at the WDR Electronic Music Studio in Cologne. The young composer from Budapest increasingly gained a reputation and reputation on the international contemporary music scene.

In 1979, Pierre Boulez (1925-2016) brought him to the intercontemporain ensemble he founded. In 1998, Eötvös made his international breakthrough as an opera composer with “The Three Sisters” based on Chekhov, premiered in Lyon in 1998.

hpi/dpa