Péter Eötvös 1944-2024

Composer, conductor and pedagogue Péter Eötvös who has died, aged 80, was a key figure of contemporary music in and beyond his native Hungary. Born in Transylvania (“just like Kurtág and Ligeti,” he would often point out), he studied with Zoltán Kodály at the Budapest Academy from the age of 14; subsequent mentors included Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez.  The far-reaching range of his own music – from opera and music theatre to chamber works and electronic music – would influence successive generations of composers, while his Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation encouraged and promoted numerous young musicians.

For ECM New Series, Péter Eötvös conducted the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra in several important recordings. These included Elliott Carter’s opera What Next?, an album contrasting the music of Austrian composers Friedrich Cerha and Franz Schreker, and Kim Kashkashian’s Cannes Award winning recording of 20^th century Hungarian music which brought together Bartók’s Viola Concerto, Kurtág’s Movement for Viola and Orchesta and Eötvös’s composition Replica (written especially for Kashkashian). He also conducted the Ensemble Modern on Helmut Lachenmann’s widely-acclaimed Schwankungen am Rand. Eötvös’s challenging composition Derwischtanz for solo clarinet appears on Reto Bieri’s recital disc Contrechant.

Discover Péter Eötvös’s work on ECM here