The Basque-born Ramon Lazkano – an outstanding composer of his generation, winner of numerous prizes and awards – will be the guest professor of the Péter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation's next masterclass. He will work with young conductors and composers during a five-day workshop alongside Péter Eötvös, Gergely Vajda and Balázs Horváth. The course aims to develop the students' musical language and expression, and to refine their conducting technique. Lazkano, who teaches composition in the Basque Country after Strasbourg and Barcelona, will also help to teach his own works, giving both students and audiences an insight into a musical language that is still unknown in Hungary. Works by Lazkano, Horváth and Ligeti, as well as a new piece by Sebastian Black, and composed for the instrumentation of Ligeti's Kammerkonzert, will be performed by the Foundation's regular partner, the Danubia Orchestra. Hungarian audiences may already be familiar with Balázs Horváth's Unisono, premiered in 2022 at the Transparent Sound New Music Festival, but Lazkano's pieces will be performed as Hungarian premieres.

Ramon Lazkano said of his music during an interview: "Every single event, each articulation, breath, or movement of the performer – beyond what they do with the instrument itself – contributes to the way we experience music as we listen to it, whether it is a symphony by Beethoven or a piece by Lachenmann. This is how we perceive the period of time, the duration of the sound that we take in, that we grasp, and this is what we call the artistic experience of music."

Photo © Marco Giugliarelli for Civitella Ranieri Foundation, 2018