Biography:

Péter Eötvös (Hungarian: Eötvös Péter, Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈøtvøʃ ˈpeːtɛr]; 2 January 1944 – 24 March 2024) was a Hungarian composer, conductor and teacher.

Eötvös was born in Székelyudvarhely, Transylvania, then part of Hungary, now Romania. He studied composition in Budapest and Cologne. From 1962, he composed for film in Hungary. Eötvös played regularly with the Stockhausen Ensemble between 1968 and 1976. He was a founding member of the Oeldorf Group in 1973, continuing his association until the late 1970s. From 1979 to 1991, he was musical director and conductor of the Ensemble InterContemporain (EIC). From 1985 to 1988, he was principal guest conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Early life

As a child, Eötvös received a thorough musical education, including works by Béla Bartók. He felt a strong link between Hungarian grammar and Bartók’s music, claiming that the specific “Hungarian” interpretations of music by Bartók and Kodály (as well as other Hungarian conductors such as Szell, Fricsay, Ormandy, Solti, Reiner) show subtle accents and rhythms of the Hungarian language.

His mother, a pianist, participated in the musical and intellectual life of Budapest and took her son to many performances and rehearsals of opera, operetta and theatre. He learned the piano, and also wrote plays and small pieces. He won a composition contest at age eleven and was then noticed in the Hungarian artistic world. He then met Ligeti, 21 years his senior, who recommended him to Kodály at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music. He was accepted with honours at the Academy, where he studied composition with János Viski, on Kodály’s advice.

In 1958, he was asked to accompany film projections with improvisations on piano and hammond organ. He was then asked to write scores for theatre and cinema. By 1970, he had composed several pieces of utility music. He learned the importance of timing and synchronisation. He also discovered noise as a sound, which was the starting point of some later compositions. The work Zero Points begins with a countdown, as if destined to synchronise sound and image, the double bass then takes on a high-pitched sound reminding the cracks of an old magnetic tape.

During a period of ten years he developed personal musical preferences, for Gesualdo (the idea of the madrigal returns in pieces such as Drei Madrigalkomödien and Tri sestry (Three Sisters)), American jazz of the 1960s, electronic music (of which Karlheinz Stockhausen‘s figure was inseparable), and Pierre Boulez, among others. He quickly distanced himself from other composers of the Academy.

Later career

In 1970, Eötvös requested a scholarship to go study abroad, leaving for Cologne (DE), following the examples of Kurtág and Ligeti.^[1] The Hochschule für Musik Köln and the studio of the broadcaster Westdeutscher Rundfunk worked together at that time, which allowed students to use advanced technology in one of the best studios in Europe. Eötvös worked there from 1971 to 1979^[1] He studied composition with Bernd Alois Zimmermann, as well as conducting. He met Stockhausen, already being familiar with his work. Eötvös became Stockhausen’s engineer and copyist (the score of Telemusik is copied by him), and his musician and conductor, amongst other things conducting the La Scala premiere of Donnerstag aus Licht in 1981, as well as its Covent Garden performances in 1985.

In 1978, Boulez asked him to conduct the opening concert of IRCAM in Paris (FR).^[2] He was then appointed musical director of the Ensemble InterContemporain, holding the position until 1991.^[1][2] He performed at the Proms in 1980, and was regularly invited by the BBC Orchestra between 1985 and 1988.^[1] This period also marks his first success as a composer with his Chinese Opera (1986), written for the 10-year anniversary of the Ensemble InterContemporain. The piece constitutes a reflexion on the theatricality of sound, as the composer spreads the musicians through the stage, a process also found in Three Sisters. Each movement is a tribute to directors he admired: Bob Wilson, Klaus Michael Grüber, Luc Bondy, Patrice Chéreau, Jacques Tati and Peter Brook.

Jean-Pierre Brossman, director of the Opéra National de Lyon (FR) at that time, admired his ability to take into consideration the work of artists and directors, and commissioned an opera in 1986: Three Sisters, based on Chekhov’s play. In 2008, he premiered two other operas, Lady Sarashina and Love and Other Demons.

Eötvös was principal guest conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra (SE) from 2003 to 2007.^[1] His recording of Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia with the London Voices (DG) received the award for “Technical excellence in recording” by the BBC Music Magazine in 2006. He served as a member of the jury of the Tōru Takemitsu composition competition in 2014.

His first opera to a Hungarian libretto, Valuska, was premiered in Budapest on 2 December 2023. Based on the 1989 novel The Melancholy of Resistance by László Krasznahorkai, it was commissioned by the Hungarian State Opera.^[3]

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