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    Peter Eötvös

    conductor and composer

    Vita

    Composer, conductor, and educator: Peter Eötvös combines these three roles in an extraordinary career. Born in 1944 in Hungarian Transylvania, he studied composition and piano at the Budapest Academy of Music and conducting at the Cologne Academy of Music. He was a member of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s ensemble from 1968 to 1976, playing piano and percussion, and from 1971 to 1979 he worked at WDR’s Studio for Electronic Music. In 1978, at the invitation of Pierre Boulez, Eötvös was appointed music director of the Ensemble intercontemporain – a position he held until 1991. As a conductor, he has worked with ensembles as the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics; the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam; the BBC Symphony Orchestra; the Budapest Festival Orchestra; the Gothenburg Symphony; the Vienna, Stuttgart, and Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestras; and the Ensemble Modern. From 1994 to 2005, he led the Hilversum Radio Chamber Orchestra and, in 2015, together with the London Symphony Orchestra, performed a concert for Boulez’s 90th birthday. Last season he was the resident artist with the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, and in the 2018-19 season he will serve as Capell-Compositeur with the Staatskapelle Dresden. As a composer, Eötvös has enjoyed successes with such operas as Tri Sestri, Angels in America, Love and Other Demons, and Die Tragödie des Teufels. In 2007 he was composer-in-residence at LUCERNE FESTIVAL, where he presented the world premiere of his Violin Concerto Seven. His orchestral piece Reading Malevich is being premiered here on 1 September. Eötvös has taught at the Music Academies of Cologne and Karlsruhe; in 1991 he founded the International Eötvös Institute in Budapest and its associated Foundation for Young Conductors and Composers. He has received numerous awards for his artistic work, the most recent of which include the Hungarian Order of Saint Stephen (2016) and the Goethe Medal (2018).

    LUCERNE FESTIVAL (IMF) debut on 6 September 1987 with the Ensemble intercontemporain in works by Varèse to Carter.

    July 2018