Geidai 21, Forest of Creation 2024 Composer Peter Eötvösch Unofficial

The 2024 "Forest of Creation" program will feature Péter Eötvösz (b. 1944), a Hungarian-born conductor, composer, and educator who has long been based in Germany and France. Whenever I compose, I imagine myself sitting in the middle of an audience. Then I listen to the music with my ears fully open. Then I write down the music I hear, the music I just experienced, on a staff. My music has been understood in this musical world because there is a very strong connection between my music and my audience." (Interview with Zenaida de Zobri, February 28, 2022) As these words suggest, Péter Eötvösch's music speaks to the listener as if attempting a dialogue through sound without pushing him or her away, sometimes asking unanswered questions. Eötvös has published 14 operas/musictheater works so far, which is another proof of his absolute trust in the linguistic and expressive function of sound. All of the works on this program are instrumental, but they all contain the essence of Eötvösch's work, provoking us, questioning us, and sometimes speaking to us intimately. The "Song of the Sirens" (2020) weaves the world of Greek mythology as depicted by Homer, Kafka, and Joyce; "Speaking Drums" (2012/2013) creates a ritual-like world of collapsed syntactic text speech and percussion interplay; and the sound is "like a camera" in film. The "Focus" (2021), in which the viewpoint moves between the solo saxophone and orchestra, and "The Eagle Soars Soundlessly" (2011), in which the dialogue between the orchestra and the percussion section using cajón and tamburo basque (a tambourine from the Basque region) creates a magical sound world, This will be a concert where you can enjoy Eötvös's "storytelling".

Fuyuko Fukunaka (Professor of Musicology, Department of Musicology, Faculty of Music, TUFS)