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Peter Eötvös (TIMF) |
Hungarian composer and conductor Peter Eotvos, who was named the composer-in-residence for the 2024 Tongyeong International Music Festival, has passed away in Budapest at the age of 80, the TIMF said Monday.
An internationally acclaimed composer whose works were inspired by Zoltan Kodaly, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez, Eotvos' ties with Tongyeong run deep. Having composed the opera "Golden Dragon" for the 2017 TIMF, he was invited to compose for the 2020 edition of TIMF. However, the annual music festival was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic and he was invited back as the composer-in-residence for the 2024 TIMF. He was set to greet audiences at this year's TIMF with the Asian premiers of “Respond” (2021) and “Aurora” (2019).
“We will have his music played at the Tongyeong Concert Hall in commemoration of his passing,” the TIMF said in a statement Monday.
“He has left, but his music will forever be next to us,” it added.
The TIMF said “Aurora" for double bass and string orchestra with accordion and “Respond" for viola and chamber orchestra will be performed by the Hong Kong Sinfonietta led by French conductor Pascal Rophe on April 2 at 7 p.m.
The Korean premiere of “Secret Kiss -- Melodrama" (2018) for narrator and five instrumentalists will be performed by Klangforum Wien with Sofia Burgos on April 3 at 7 p.m.
The Asian premiere of “Adventures of the Dominant Seventh Chord" (2019) for solo violin will be performed at Chamber Night ll on April 6 at 9:30 p.m.
“Speaking Drums" (2012/2013) will be played by the Tongyeong Festival Orchestra on April 7 at 3 p.m.
On Feb. 25, Eotvos received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Gyorgy Cziffra Festival for his decades of outstanding work in national and international classical and contemporary music, as a composer and a conductor.
Eotvos made a name for himself in the global music scene in the late 1990s as an opera composer with "Three Sisters" which premiered in Lyon in 1998.
