Hungarian composer known for his opera of
Angels in America
PÉTER EÖTVÖS, who has died aged 80, was a Hungarian conductor and composer whose opera Love and Other Demons, based on Gabriel Gárcia Márquez’s novel, was premiered at Glyndebourne in 2008; it was not his first experience of the Sussex opera house, having conducted Anja Silja there in Janacek’s The Makropulos Case in 2001.
Eötvös, a stocky figure with a large forehead and greying beard, was originally known for his conducting. As principal guest conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1985 to 1988, he brought an instinctive understanding to works such as Bartok’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. In Paris he conducted the inaugural concert of Pierre Boulez’s IRCAM Studio in 1978 and directed the Ensemble Intercontemporain until 1991.
Increasingly he turned to composition and his best-known opera is Angels in America (2002), a musical setting of Tony Kushner’s play about the Aids epidemic in the US. With The Three Sisters (1997), seen at the 2001 Edinburgh Festival, he used countertenors for Chekhov’s sisters, though
Love and Other Demons was more traditional in its telling of religious mania and persecution.
The violin concerto
Seven was heard at the 2008 Proms, the title referring to the seven astronauts killed in the 2003 Columbia disaster, symbolised by six violinists scattered around the hall echoing the soaring laments of the main soloist, Akiko Suwanai, on stage. More recently Doremi provided bravura challenges for the violinist Midori at the 2013 Proms.
While Eötvös was loudly championed by contemporary music enthusiasts, he felt that popularity mattered little. “Never give what the public asks,” he said. “You must give the public what it needs, even if they do not always know it.”
Péter Eötvös was born in Transylvania, then part of Hungary, on January 2 1944. His family fled west and he was brought up in Budapest by his pianist mother. “Bach, Mozart and Bartók were the first composers I got to know… I could play their easy piano pieces,” he recalled.
At 11 he won a prize for writing a cantata and showed the work to György Ligeti, who recommended
him to Zoltán Kodály at the Franz Liszt Academy. Another early composition was Kosmos (1961) “for one or two pianos”, inspired by Yuri Gagarin’s space flight that year. “And I’ve been thinking about how to translate the idea of the cosmos into a gigantic ambient sound ever since,” he said.
Before long he was music director of the Comedy Theatre, Budapest, writing theatre scores and accompanying films on a Hammond organ. The instrument is heard in his
Multiversum (2017), which opens with the theme from Bach’s Toccata in D minor.
Rejected by the Moscow Conservatoire, Eötvös instead received a scholarship to work with Bernd Alois Zimmermann in Cologne. He also became Karl-heinz Stockhausen’s copyist, later conducting the premiere of Stockhausen’s
Donnerstag aus Licht at La Scala in 1981 and at the Royal Opera House in 1985.
While performing on electric instruments with the Stockhausen Ensemble in Osaka in 1970 he became acquainted with Japanese culture. His opera,
Harakiri (1973), features the spectacular seppuku, or ritual suicide, of the poet Yukio Mishima.
Eötvös first conducted at the Proms in 1979 and went on to hold guest conducting positions in Budapest and Gothenburg. After Hungary joined the EU in 2004 he returned there permanently, establishing the Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation to provide mentoring for young composers and conductors.
His final opera,
Valuska (2023), his first in Hungarian, depicts a newspaper delivery man who is infatuated with man’s place in the universe.
Eötvös is survived by his wife, the librettist Maria Mezei.
Péter Eötvös, born January 2 1944, died March 24 2024