Hiller Presents Culture Ambassador Titles

Péter Eötvös is a Kossuth and Bartók-Pásztory prize-winning composer and conductor. He is the permanent director of the Dutch Radio Chamber Orchestra, guest conductor for contemporary music of Budapest's National Philharmonic Orchestra and a professor at Cologne's College of Music Arts. In 1991, he established the International Eötvös Institute, which offers post-graduate courses to young composers and conductors. Eötvös is a member of Berlin's Academy of Arts and of Hungary's Széchenyi Academy of Literature and Arts.

 

Péter Esterházy, a Kossuth prize-winning writer of books and articles, is one of the best known figures of Hungarian - and international - literature. Recognised as a master of post-modern prose, his books can be read in many of the world's most important languages. Eötvös is a founding member of the Academy of Digital Literature and a member of the Széchenyi Academy of Literature and Arts. He is a winner of the Hungarian Literature Prize, the Herder Prize and Germany's Peace Prize.

 

Sándor Kányádi is a Kossuth and Herder prize-winning poet and translator. A resident of Cluj-Napoca in Romania, Kányádi is an active participate in the literary life of schools, libraries and art centres. His readings and presentations serve to strengthen the cultural understanding and cohesion of the Hungarian language.

 

Julia Marton-Lefevre is an internationally renowned environmental expert who lives in the United States and France, but was born in Hungary. Currently, she heads the World Conservation Union (IUCN). Earlier she was rector of the University for Peace in Costa Rica and head of LEAD, an environmental protection programme established by the Rockefeller Foundation. She is a member of several international boards and a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of the United Kingdom. Though she left Hungary with her parents in 1956, she still speaks her mother tongue proudly.

 

Bea Palya is an Artisjus prize-winning singer and performer. She is among the most versatile of Hungary's young generation of musicians, as comfortable with Bulgarian and Indian folk music as with Hungarian and Roma music, jazz and sung verse. Palya won a scholarship awarded by the French Institute to study in Paris in 2002. Since then, she has performed regularly with her ensemble the Bea Palya Quintet. Palya was the Hungarian ambassador for the European Union's 2007 Year of Equal Opportunities for All and she has done much for the popularity of Hungarian folk music and poetry with her solo albums and her performances in Hungary and abroad.

 

András Schiff is a world famous pianist and conductor. He is a two-time winner of both the Grammy and the Gramophone prize. He also holds the Kossuth prize, the Bartók-Pásztory prize and the International Classical Music prize for best instrumental soloist. Though he lives in Florence and London, the "poet of the piano", as critics have called him, regularly takes the stage in Hungary.

 

Because of prior commitments, Eötvös and Schiff were unable to attend the ceremony in person, but will be presented their titles at a later date.

 

Last year's Ambassadors for Hungarian Culture were Lady Valerie Solti, László Fehér, Iván Fischer, Imre Kertész, Zoltán Kocsis and Márta Sebestyén.

 

Photographs: Eszter Gordon