A cofounder of the Budapest New Music Studio in 1970, László Vidovszky’s decision to leave the capital and move to the city of Pécs in the south of the country where he was appointed professor at the university may have contributed to the petering out of the group’s regular activities around 1990.

Vidovszky was a composer in the EMB stable and I met him early on: when I joined the company, I was rather green as far as new music was concerned and I asked if there was anyone who could give me a crash course so that I had some idea of what it was all about.

Someone suggested Vidovszky, twenty-eight years old at the time (I am three years his senior) and he came to my place. The conversation proceeded haltingly and ended without my becoming any wiser. As it turned out in the years to come, not only is Vidovszky an extremely private person, he also has difficulty in expressing his ideas by the spoken word. I remember an occasion in Finland at a press conference arranged by the Kuhmo Festival where I ended up as his mouthpiece, so to speak, for I knew the answers he was unable to articulate.

I cannot claim to have developed any close relationship with László Vidovszky, perhaps I do not even know him to any reasonable degree. But I do admire his music, which has always impressed me with its stunning originality. A Hungarian Satie perhaps? I do not know. In any case, it is no accident that Kurtág should have been influenced by his Autokoncert (1972), a haunting piece of music theater with instruments dropping from the rope on which they were precariously suspended and in doing so, producing a sound. I never heard or saw it but understand it creates an eerie experience.

Living in the provinces and with very little contact outside Hungary, Vidovszky appears to have accepted his isolation. He has performances every now and again in Budapest and Pécs and he is happy with that. A great pity: his music ought to be part of the international consciousness.