Kurtág 95 – Szőllősy 100 Presented by Liszt Academy

András Szőllősy, a leading composer and musicologist in the decades after the period hallmarked by the names of Bartók and Kodály, was born in the Transylvanian town of Orăștie (Szászváros) exactly one hundred years ago, on 27 February 1921. A senior master of the ‘great generation’, a contemporary of György Ligeti and György Kurtág, just like his two world-famous colleagues he, too, did much to ensure the survival of Hungarian music on the world stage even after Bartók and others. The young Ligeti loved and respected him like a brother: “your talent and knowledge impressed me enormously, you influenced me like an older brother. And you opened up a world to me that had appeared inaccessible, western culture,” he wrote in 1996, on the 75th birthday of Szőllősy. Just as the oeuvres of Bartók and Kodály have focused international attention on Hungarian performing arts, the oeuvres of the three masters of modern music, Kurtág, Ligeti and Szőllősy, represent an enormous opportunity, and at the same time, a responsibility, for today's musician generation, be they master or student.