Péter Tornyai - Streichquintett
'Streichquintett' was composed in 2010 during the International Summer Academy music course in Mürzzuschlag, Austria.
The background of the piece is a microtonal sound-system, which is produced by the different scordaturas (tunings) of all the 20 strings of the five instruments. The relations between the retuned strings are based on the harmonic series. Moreover the piece contains only open strings and natural harmonics – to avoid the 'out of tune' feeling and to produce a new, natural sound.
The piece has strong connections with Schubert's String Quintet in C major. Apart from the same instrumentation, there are more or less perceivable allusions and quotations from Schubert's work.
Streichquintett is dedicated to the hungarian pianist András Kemenes, and it had its first performance by the Aroha Quartet. (Source: Péter Tornyai)
Péter Tornyai was born in 1987 in Szeged, Hungary. As a composer he studied in his native city with Lajos Huszár and then in Budapest with István Fekete Győr. Since 2007 he has been student of Zoltán Jeney at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music, Budapest where he also studies violin.
As a violinist and violist he often plays classical and contemporary music with chamber ensembles such as THReNSeMBle, Ludium Ensemble, Rondo Quartet, Apponyi Quartet and Classicus et Universus Ensemble (Artist in Residence of Central European University).
He has won 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes at the Composition Competition of the Liszt Academy and the 1st prize of the Compositon Competition of the Fine Arts Museum, Budapest in 2008. In 2011 he won the 1st prize and two special prizes in the chamber ensemble category of New Hungarian Music Forum Composer Competition. He was commisioned to write the compulsory piece of the 1st International Végh Sándor String Quartet Competition. In 2012 his string ensemble piece won 1st prize at the Wiener Konzerthaus's composing competition "Towards the Next 100 Years".
He was a participant in the masterclasses and seminars of Gyula Csapó, Johannes Schöllhorn (2008) Nigel Osborne (2009, 2010), Krzysztof Penderecki (2010), Larry Polansky (2011), Louis Andriessen (2012) and Fabio Nieder (2012). His pieces have been performed in Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, USA and New Zealand by ensembles such as the JACK Quartet, Stadler Quartet and UMZE.