Ricordi Berlin has announced a brand new program, ricordilab, that will provide the opportunity for up to five emerging composers to participate in a three-year collaboration with our publishing house. ricordi berlin will publish selected works and provide international promotion for successful applicants and will also support the laureates with expertise in the music industry.

Budapest Music Center will celebrate the 90th birthday of György Kurtág with a grandiose festival between 14-21 February. The concert will present almost every part of the oeuvre, from the solo and chamber works to the choir and orchestral compositions. Apart from the original Kurtág pieces visitors will also have the chance to hear transcriptions of the piano pieces Játékok for chamber ensemble by Olivier Cuendet, the orchestral version of Zwiegespräch (originally composed for a string quartet and synthesizer), a program consisting of unpublished or barely known compositions and an homage concert of works by Kurtág contemporaries.

The 2014 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category of contemporary music was awarded to György Kurtág on February 10th, 2015. The renowned Hungarian composer was nominated by both the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music and the Széchenyi Academy of Arts. The award is funded by the Spanish BBVA Foundation in order to promote and disseminate world-class scientific research and artistic creation. This honorable prize (worth 400,000€) was presented to Kurtág by the BBVA on June 23th, 2015. As the part of the celebrations (beside the orchestral works by Ravel and Berlioz) Kurtág's juvenile work Movement for viola and orchestra was performed by Philip Dukes and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Euskadi conducted by Jun Märkl.

Máté Bella’s new work was commissioned by the Musica Viva concert series of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Composed in 2014, its world première takes place on 20 February 2015 in the Munich Hercules Hall, as part of a Musica Viva weekend devoted to contemporary music. It will be performed by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Peter Eötvös. This publication is the first in the Peter Eötvös Foundation Series dedicated to new compositions by talented young composers discovered and supported by the Foundation.

Eight Invocations to the Lunar Phases, a cycle for viola and piano by László Tihanyi published in 2011 will be premiered by Kim Kashkashian és Péter Nagy in Florence’s Teatro della Pergola on 15th November, preceding the Hungarian premier by nine days. During the spring of 2015 the piece will be performed repeatedly in the United States, e. g. at such distinguished venues as the Morgan Library in New York or the Library of Congress in Washington DC where Béla Bartók and József Szigeti gave a recital in 1940.

6 composers, 3 singers, 3 instrumentalists, and 1 conductor: Out at S.E.A. is a joint project supervised by Péter Eötvös, Luca Francesconi and Balázs Horváth and supported by the Peter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation and the Budapest Music Center. After performances in Budapest and Milan the French premiere takes places at IRCAM in Paris on July 9.

Out at S.E.A came into being as the result of a unique process, a combination of a composition workshop, a competition for composers, and a complex final phase of assembling the parts and creating and rehearsing the final result, a chamber opera. Or, rather, a double chamber opera, as the same libretto is set to music in two independent versions.

János Vajda (1949) has always been highly acclaimed for his vocal output. His Mario and the Magician and Leonce and Lena founded his fame as the leading Hungarian opera composer of the last decades. But his contribution to Latin sacred music is equally substantial, his Magnificat, Pater noster and Mass in B having been his main achievements so far.

His Requiem for mixed choir and organ was composed in 2012 and premiered on 10th May 2014 by its dedicatees, the Canticum Novum Chamber Choir in Debrecen, directed by Ágnes Török. The piece has eight movements, and its peculiarity is that unlike Mozart but similarly to Fauré’s Requiem the piece does not include an Offertorium; however, Lux aeterna is followed by a Libera me and an In Paradisum movement. On the other hand, Vajda set to music the dramatic Medieval sequentia Dies irae, missing from Fauré’s Requiem. In any case, these differences are permitted by the flexibility of the liturgy.

The second edition of "Clara Peia" International Piano Competition organized at György Kurtág's hometown Lugoj on 25-26th April is dedicated to children between 5-13 years old.  Editio Musica Budapest and Budapest Music Center offered a special prize "György Kurtág" (The eight books and CD recordings of Játékok) for the best performance of a contemporary piece.

The work da capo for cimbalom and ensemble was composed in winter 2013-2014 at the invitation of Porto’s Casa da Musica, the Salzburg Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum and New World Symphony, America’s Orchestral Academy (Miami). The cimbalom solo was inspired by the performance of Hungarian cimbalom player Miklós Lukács.

The concerto was composed in 2012, inspired by István Várdai’s play and is dedicated to him. The triple movement structure and the character of the movements follow the patterns of classical concertos, while the thematic connections spanning the movements rather reflect the structural principles of Romantic symphonies.