<\/p>\n
Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtag looks on as he holds his ‘Doctor Honoris Causa’ he received from the University ‘Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music’ in Budapest in February 2026 – Copyright AFP Attila KISBENEDEK<\/small><\/em><\/p>\n G\u00e9za MOLNAR and Balazs WIZNER<\/em><\/p>\n As Hungarian Gyorgy Kurtag, who is widely considered one of the greatest living classical composers, turns 100 on Thursday, he will offer a one-of-a-kind birthday gift to music lovers: a brand-new opera.<\/p>\n In recent weeks, people across the globe have paid tribute to the star composer, with Budapest marking his centennial with special events, concerts and documentaries.<\/p>\n Later this month, the world premiere of Kurtag\u2019s second opera \u201cDie Stechardin\u201d about the 18th-century love story of a German polymath and a flower girl will cap the centenary of his birth.<\/p>\n In a rare interview with a Hungarian weekly in 2017, Kurtag confided that composing can sometimes be \u201cpainful\u201d.<\/p>\n But despite being confined to a wheelchair and suffering a loss of hearing, Kurtag has lost none of his intellectual vibrancy or passion for music, according to those close to him.<\/p>\n \u201cHe doesn\u2019t hear so well anymore. But in return, he feels even more, he perceives even more from the world and from music,\u201d Concerto Budapest conductor Andras Keller told AFP during a rehearsal of Kurtag\u2019s new one-act opera earlier this month.<\/p>\n When his wife, pianist Marta Kurtag, who was also a close artistic partner, died in 2019, \u201ceveryone was scared about what would happen next\u201d, said Laszlo Goz, director of Budapest Music Center, where Kurtag now resides.<\/p>\n But Kurtag resumed composing, \u201cwriting increasingly larger and more complex pieces\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cHe began teaching again, and now he has written his second opera, which is a kind of message to his wife, Marta,\u201d Goz said.<\/p>\n Born on 19 February, 1926, in the Romanian city of Lugoj to ethnic Hungarian parents, Kurtag started playing the piano as a young boy.<\/p>\n After taking piano and composition lessons as a teenager in Timisoara, he eventually moved to Budapest in 1946, where he began his studies at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music.<\/p>\n While studying, he met fellow composer Gyorgy Sandor Ligeti.<\/p>\n He graduated in piano and chamber music in 1951, and later in composition, before pursuing his studies in Paris for a year.<\/p>\n Over the decades, the award-winning musician became famous for composing short yet highly complex pieces, and only turning to opera late in life.<\/p>\n \u2013 \u2018Master of miniature forms\u2019 \u2013<\/p>\n Throughout his career, Kurtag drew inspiration from literature and the works of famous compatriots like Bela Bartok. But despite his success, he was not immune to suffering from writer\u2019s block.<\/p>\n After returning to Hungary, in 1960 he became a repetiteur with the Budapest Philharmonic Society, and would later teach piano and chamber music at his alma mater.<\/p>\n At age 92, his first opera \u201cFin de partie\u201d premiered at Milan\u2019s famous La Scala in late 2018.<\/p>\n Based on Irish writer Samuel Beckett\u2019s play \u201cEndgame\u201d, and more than seven years in the making, Kurtag and his wife did not attend the premiere due to their advanced age and instead opted for the radio broadcast.<\/p>\n Like Beckett, who lived and died in Paris, Kurtag also has a passion for the French language.<\/p>\n The musician and his wife settled near Bordeaux in France in the mid-1990s before moving back to Hungary in 2015.<\/p>\n Kurtag\u2019s \u201cmusic glows with such intensity, even in its quietest, most refined moments,\u201d said music historian Gergely Fazekas.<\/p>\n His music \u201cstrives with such force to discover what reality is\u2026 what is unspoken but still there,\u201d Fazekas told AFP during a ceremony in early February at the Liszt Academy, where the composer received an honorary doctorate and led a rehearsal of his new opera.<\/p>\n He said Kurtag is widely referred to as \u201cthe master of miniature forms\u201d, as many of his pieces \u201ccapture only a few minutes or even less period of time from eternity\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.digitaljournal.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtag looks on as he holds his ‘Doctor Honoris Causa’ he received from the University ‘Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music’ in Budapest in February 2026 – Copyright AFP Attila KISBENEDEK G\u00e9za MOLNAR and Balazs WIZNER As Hungarian Gyorgy Kurtag, who is widely considered one of the greatest living classical composers, turns 100 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2287405,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[362738,342385,443284,21800],"class_list":["post-2287404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-hide","tag-hungary","tag-kurtag","tag-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Hungarian-star-composer-Kurtag-celebrates-100th-birthday-with-new-opera.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2287404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2287404"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2287404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2287406,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2287404\/revisions\/2287406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2287405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2287404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2287404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2287404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}