The Hungarian born author, Bálint András Varga, who is a well known promotion manager in the contemporary musical world revised and republished his book twenty five years after the first Hungarian edition.

His three questions - related to the inspirations and the formation of one’s own personal style - were raised with the most important composers of the late twentieth century and of the last decade. Not only Boulez, Cage, Ligeti, Reich, Stockhausen and Wolff but several UMPC composers like Berio, Nono, Eötvös, Kurtág, Petrassi, Szőllősy, Xenakis provided their answers as well.

PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD and KLANGFORUM WIEN perform László Vidovszky's Reverb on 27 August in the program of Kunstfest Weimar. The work for piano and string quartet was comissioned as a part of the project „Visions" - a hommage to Franz Liszt.

Celebrating Liszt's 200th birthday Kunstfest Weimar comissioned seven new compositions by composers representing the seven most important countries in Liszt's life and work: Switzerland, France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Austria and Russia.

Between May 19th and 21st, solo and chamber works by György Kurtág will be performed at five concerts in Schwetzingen Castle near Heidelberg, which has for six decades traditionally provided a venue for early and modern music. Featuring in the programme are the string and wind movements of Signs, Games and Messages; the Messages of the Late R.V. Troussova; the Twelve Microludien; the Officium breve in memoriam Andreae Szervánszky; the Kafka-Fragmente; excerpts from the Series of Games written for piano; and Hommage à Robert Schumann, together with chamber works by Schönberg, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Schumann – emphasizing the close relationship between the art of Kurtág and classical chamber music. Kurtág’s music will be interpreted by the most outstanding performers of the composer’s works, including Juliane Banse, András Keller, Tabea Zimmermann, Heinz Holliger, Jörg Widmann, Dénes Várjon, the Collegium Novum Zürich and the Hagen Quartet.

Balázs Horváth’s Divergent for trumpet and big band is performed by Croatian Radio Television Big Band conducted by Saša Nestorović on 13 April, organised by ISCM World New Music Days and Zagreb Biennale.

www.mbz.hr

THReNSeMBle (Artistic leader: Balázs Horváth) will participate at the Gaudeamus Interpreters Competition in Amsterdam. Beside the works of Franco Donatoni, Theo Lovendie, Pierre Boulez and Yannis Kyriakides will be played Péter Tornyai’s Abfall-Musik, Zoltán Jeney’s Self-quotations, Balázs Horváth’s Waiting for... and László Tihanyi’s Summer Music.

The program of the competition is also performed in Budapest on 31 March and 4 April.

www.thrensemble.com

The recent issue of Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (2011/2) is devoted to the music of György Kurtág celebrating his 85th birthday with articles and studies by Gösta Neuwirth, Rainer Nonnenmann, Hartmut Lück, Stefan Drees and Philipp Brüllmann.

www.musikderzeit.de

To celebrate György Kurtág’s 85th birthday a gala concert was held on February 20th in Budapest, in the Palace of Arts. The concert programme included both chamber music and orchestral works: Four Akhmatova Poems and Messages of the late Miss R. V. Troussova were performed by Natalia Zagorinskaya and the UMZE Ensemble conducted by Péter Eötvös; Grabstein für Stefan, Op.27No.2 (Double Concerto) and Stele were played by the Concerto Budapest Orchestra conducted by András Keller. The soloists in the orchestral works were Elena Casoli (guitar), Gábor Csalog (piano) and Nicolas Altstaedt (cello).

At a press conference on January 20th the results of the first round of the 2011 New Hungarian Music Forum were announced. Eight works ( four chamber and four orchestral pieces) by seven young Hungarian composers (Marcell DARGAY, Balázs HORVÁTH, László SÁNDOR, Péter TORNYAI, Árpád SOLTI, Judit VARGA and Ákos ZARÁNDY) reached the final, which will take the form of a public gala concert to be given on February 8th, 2011 in the Palace of Arts, Budapest. The chamber works will be presented by the UMZE Chamber Ensemble, and the orchestral pieces by the Concerto Budapest Orchestra conducted by Zoltán Rácz and András Keller. There and then the jury will decide on and announce the order of the prizes.

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