Composer, conductor and teacher: the Hungarian Peter Eötvös combines all three roles in one very high-profile career. His music features regularly in the programmes of orchestras, contemporary music ensembles and festivals worldwide; and as composer/conductor he has led projects focusing on his work in centres including Paris, London, Berlin, Vienna, Lucerne, Göteborg. His operas, Le Balcon and Angels in America, follow the lead of his Three Sisters by generating an ever-increasing number of new productions; and several major music theatre commissions are due in the next few years by the Opéra National de Lyon, Glyndebourne Festival Opera and the Bayerische Staatsoper.
Peter Eötvös’s conducting activities are characterised especially by long-term relationships with a number of key orchestras and institutions: the Berlin Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Ensemble Intercontemporain and Netherlands Radio. Since 2003, Peter Eötvös holds title as Principle Guest Conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. He will start as Principle Guest Conductor of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra in the 2009/10 season.
Former positions have included the Principal Guest Conductor at the BBC Symphony Orchestra (1985-1988), Chief Conductor of the Radio Chamber Orchestra of Hilversum (1994-2005), as well as First Guest Conductor of the Budapest Festival Orchestra (1992-1995), the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (2003- 2005), and the National Philharmonic Orchestra Budapest (1998-2001).
Mr Eötvös is generally regarded as one of the leading interpreters of contemporary music. He performed regularly with the Stockhausen Ensemble between 1968 and 1976 and collaborated with the electronic music studio of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne from 1971 to 1979. In 1978, at the invitation of Pierre Boulez, he conducted the inaugural concert of IRCAM in Paris, and was subsequently named Musical Director of the Ensemble InterContemporain, a post he held until 1991.
His teaching activities are of equal importance to him as his composition and performance career – especially his work at the Musikhochschule in Karlsruhe since 1992 and at the International Eötvös Institute and Foundation for young conductors and composers in Budapest, which he founded in 1991.
Peter Eötvös’s works have been recorded by BIS AG, BMC, DGG, ECM, KAIROS, COL LEGNO and his music is published by Editio Musica (Budapest), Ricordi (Munich), Salabert (Paris), and Schott Music (Mainz). He is a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, Szechenyi Academy of Art in Budapest, Sächsische Akademie der Künste in Dresden, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.
Mr. Eötvös has been honoured with numerous awards including the Officier de l'Ordre des l'Arts et des Lettres and the Commandeur l´Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Cultural Minister as well as the Kossuth Prize, the Bartók Prize, the Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award and the Prize SACD Palmarès ‘Prix Musique’. He also received the Cannes Classical Award for ‘Living Composer’, the Pro Europa Composition Prize and was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2004. Peter Eötvös is the winner of the 2007 Frankfurt Music Prize.
Eötvös’s opera Three Sisters was awarded France's Prix Claude-Rostand, Grand Prix de la Critique (1998) and Victoires de la Musique Classique and du Jazz (1999), and its CD won Grand Prix of Academie Charles Cros (1999), Diapason d'or de l'année 2000, ECHO Preis 2000 in Germany and Prix Caecilia in Belgium (2000). In 2003 the film of his opera Le Balcon won the Grand Prix Golden Prague.
Find out more about the composer on the Harrison Parrott website and Peter Eötvös Website.