At the “Pagoda,” as Hungarian Radio’s café is called, on account of the shape of its glass-and-metal entrance hall, I would often see a smiling young man, rather short of stature, with his hair combed in what was then, in the mid-1960s, considered a modern style. He was two years my senior, that is, around twenty-seven at the time, and as he says in our interview, he did “office work” at the radio—I am not quite sure what exactly it may have been. We were to be introduced in 1971 or so, after I had joined Editio Musica Budapest (EMB) to promote the works of Hungarian composers: until the fall of communism, EMB was the only publisher of its kind in the country and as a result, its job was to take on pieces by every composer worthy of the name.

Bozay had a pronounced country accent, his vowels in particular had a timbre which had an unusual ring to them for my urban ears. He was a shy young man: on one occasion he confessed that he could not bring himself to ask a question a third time. If he had missed the reply, he might repeat the question, but he would rather say thank you and leave than admit that he had again failed to understand the person’s answer.

As many of his colleagues, Bozay went out of his way to be “up to date” in his idiom. His chamber compositions in particular, such as Formazioni for cello solo or Two Movements for oboe and piano posed what counted at the time as tremendous technical difficulties. In fact, it was for Heinz Holliger to prove that the oboe work was playable and he kept it on his repertoire for some time. When I first heard the cello piece, I was completely out of my depth, I had no idea what to listen for and rather watched what appeared to be a more or less hopeless struggle of the cellist with his instrument. Years later, when I was better versed in contemporary music, I had no trouble following Bozay’s train of thought and learned to appreciate the work.