György Kurtág | en

György Kurtág was born on 19th February 1926 at Lugoj in Romania, not far from the birthplace of fellow Hungarian György Ligeti. Both young composers hoped to study with Béla Bartók in Budapest in 1945, but Bartók died in America and Kurtág went on to study piano, composition and chamber music with other teachers at the Budapest Academy. Among his early works was a Korean Cantata which expressed solidarity with the North Koreans in the Korean War against the US, but he reached the age of thirty-three before he was willing to give any of his works opus numbers. In...

György Sándor Ligeti; (May 28, 1923 – June 12, 2006) was a Jewish Hungarian composer born in Romania who later became an Austrian citizen. Ligeti received his initial musical training in the conservatory at Kolozsvár (Cluj, Transylvania, Romania). His education was interrupted in 1944 when, as a Jew, he was forced to labor by the Nazis. At the same time his parents, brother, and other relatives were deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, his mother being the only survivor. Following the war, Ligeti returned to his studies in Budapest, graduating in 1949. He studied under Pál Kadosa, Ferenc Farkas, Zoltán...

The hungarian king of pop music, and an avid poker player. His favourite word is "esszeh" which means "touzand", or a thousand. .