Symposium highlights Hungarian composers

Does music have a sense of place? What happens when composers move? Do they adjust their style and compositional techniques to meet new circumstances, or do they impose something of their culture and training on their new surroundings?

These are just some of the questions that will be examined in a symposium entitled Centre and Periphery, Roots and Exile: Interpreting the music of István Anhalt and György Kurtág, to be held Jan. 22 to 25 at the Rozsa Centre.

This international bilingual symposium will focus on the work of composers István Anhalt and György Kurtág.

As a young man, Anhalt spent a period with other Jewish youths in a forced-labour contingent of the Hungarian army. Following the war he worked for a year as assistant conductor at the Budapest Opera (1945–1946). In 1946, he went to Paris, before immigrating to Canada in 1949. Since his arrival, Anhalt’s contribution to music in Canada has been enormous.

Little is known of Kurtág’s wartime experience, though being Jewish he, like Anhalt, was lucky to survive. Kurtág spent most of the next 30 years of his professional career behind the iron curtain. Today Kurtág is widely held to be Hungary’s greatest living composer.

The symposium presents two keynote speakers: composer István Anhalt himself and Rachel Beckles Willson (Royal Holloway, University of London), as well as concerts presented by Calgary’s five prominent music groups including the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, U of C Chamber Choir, and pianists Daniel Fung and Rosabel Choi, who won Concerto Concert in 2007.

The symposium is organized by Department of Music professor Friedemann Sallis (Music History and Literature). For more information about the symposium or concerts, please call (403) 210-7576 or visit www.finearts.ucalgary.ca.