Celebrated Hungarian composer and conductor Péter Eötvös has died, his family told MTI. Eötvös, an eminent personality of the Hungarian and international contemporary music scene, died on Sunday after a long illness, at the age of 80. Born in 1944 in Transylvania’s Odorheiu Secuiesc (Székelyudvarhely), Eötvös was admitted at the age of 14 to the Budapest Liszt Music Academy’s class for outstanding talents by Zoltán Kodály. He later studied conducting on a scholarship in Cologne. After 1967 he worked abroad, on assignments in Cologne, Paris and London and was conductor over the past several decades of the Berlin, Munich, London and Vienna symphonic orchestras. He composed several operas, madrigals and works for orchestra and also wrote scores for theatre and cinema. His last opera, Valuska, written for Hungarian scores, had its premiere in Budapest on December 2 last year. Eötvös received the Hungarian state’s highest award, the Kossuth Grand Prize, for his lifetime achievement of “epochal significance” in 2024.