Gyula Dávid, one of the most important representatives of the generation following Bartók and Kodály, was born on the 6th of May 1913. His versatile oeuvre – a significant part of it published by Editio Musica Budapest - was a great success after the 2nd World War. His Viola Concerto is still often played. The centenary of his birth gives us the opportunity to rediscover his music that got less attention in the past 36 years since his death. His works will be played on the 2nd of May at the Old Academy of Music, the 5th of May at the FUGA Architectural Centre, on the 9th at Óbudai Társaskör. On the 4th of May, he will be remembered through an exhibition at the Community Centre of Visegrád.

The Hungarian Academy of Sciences Research Centre for the Humanities Institute for Musicology is organizing a conference on March 14th, 2013, to mark Zoltán Jeney’s 70th birthday. From 10 a.m. lectures will be given by Sándor Kovács, Szabolcs Molnár, Anna Dalos, Tünde Szitha, Balázs Déri and Zoltán Farkas on the composer’s works and the history of the New Music Studio. From 2.30 p.m. the conference will close with a concert featuring a selection of Zoltán Jeney’s chamber music works.

Kim Kashkashian won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo with her Kurtág/Ligeti album titled Music for Viola. The american-armenian viola master has devoted herself principally to the Hungarian composer György Kurtág's works for the last twenty years. As Joshua Kosman wrote: „It's a terrific pairing of two linked but complementary sensibilities, matching Kurtág's terse, aphoristic style with Ligeti's more expansive and playful creative personality."

This year the Finnish Wihuri Foundation has awarded to György Kurtág the prize for composition established in 1953 and first awarded to Jean Sibelius, after whom it was later named. The prestige of this distinction is demonstrated by the list of the recipients over the last six decades:  Jean Sibelius; Paul Hindemith; Dmitrij Shostakovich; Igor Stravinsky; Benjamin Britten; Erik Bergman, Usko Meriläinen and Einojuhani Rautavaara; Olivier Messiaen; Witold Lutoslawski; Joonas Kokkonen; Krzysztof Penderecki; Aulis Sallinen; Ligeti György; Magnus Lindberg; Per Nørgård; Kaija Saariaho. The foundation’s prize for science was awarded this year to the internationally well-known Finnish researcher in bioeconomics, Merja Pentttilä.

A Chamber Opera Workshop is being organized for young composers by the Peter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation in 2013 to produce a jointly created opera on Sławomir Mrożek’s absurd one-act play entitled ‘Out at Sea’, which unites and addresses the predominant phenomena of the modern age (alienation, abuse of power, conformity and the question of the boundaries of freedom) in one grotesque situation, and in which the problem of part-whole relations is reflected in the possibilities of form and technique.

One of the peak point of the Bach-Kurtág Festival at Cité de la Musique was the recital where a selection of earlier and brand new solo and four-hands movements was performed from Kurtág's Játékok cycle and of his own Bach transcriptions. The video-recordig of the concert is avilable at the website of Cité de la Musique until 22 january, 2013.

This autumn László Tihanyi is the composer in residence at the 7. Kempten Internationales Festival der Kammermusik. In the framework of the week-long series of concerts four of his works will be performed, including the première of Rundherum, for piano and string quartet, commissioned by the festival. The title refers to the arrangement on the platform of the instruments and music stands, and to the movement of the players.

In György Kurtág’s works tradition is not just processed or incorporated experience, but much more than that: constant inspiration, often acknowledged even in the titles, that together with his individual voice and personality has already made his music a classical example of contemporary music. Between September 19th and 26th a week of concerts and musicology lectures in the Cité de la Musique, Paris, will offer an insight primarily into the links between Kurtág’s music and that of Bach, but in the background of this portrait the faces of Schumann, Webern and Bartók will also appear.

"We have been working on it for eight years and perhaps we will never finish. The aim is, after all, to continue the dialogue between us." So wrote György Kurtág, Jr. on his and his father's joint composition Zwiegespräch in 2007. This piece, originally composed for string quartet and synthesizer, represents an extraordinary cooperation: a dialogue between two different artists, two generations and also between the sounds of tradition and new technologies.

The ninth and last concert of the project "Europe through the eyes of Russians. Russia through the eyes of Europeans" (organized by the Centre of Contemporary Music, Moscow Conservatory) is dedicated to the musical connections of Russia and Hungary. Along with earlier solo and chamber works by Denisov, Ustvolskaya, Bartók, Ligeti and Kurtág, new commissioned compositions by Nikolay Khrust and by László Tihanyi are to be premiered at Rachmaninov Hall on February 9.