BMC to Mark Kurtág's 100th Anniversary with Festival

The Budapest Music Center (BMC) is organizing a festival between February 15 and 28, 2026 and a year-round series of events to mark the 100th anniversary of Hungarian composer György Kurtág's birth, with "international stars and prominent Hungarian contemporary performers playing a cross-section of the composer's oeuvre at the most important classical music venues of Budapest," the organizer said in a statement.

Culture and innovation minister Balazs Hankó told a press conference on the event that the government was financing Kurtag100 with HUF 342 million (EUR 890,000).

"Gyorgy Kurtag is the youngest Hungarian artist; everyone is young who has the courage to surpass the conventions of tradition not by negating them, but re-constructing them while preserving their values," Hanko said.

BMC director Laszlo Gőz said the festival would feature the premiere of a film called Kurtag Fragments at the Palace of Arts (Müpa) on February 18. On February 19, Kurtag's birthday, The Danubia Orchestra will give a concert at Müpa featuring pianist Vikingur Olafson and cellist István Várdai as soloists.