When in 1984 four students from the Academy of Music formed the Amadinda they could hardly have imagined that three of the most influential composers of the late 20th century would each write a work for them. Of course, besides John Cage, György Ligeti and Steve Reich, over the past decades many composers have written music for the four percussionists or with them in mind, and as the programme for their anniversary concert at the Autumn Festival shows, the works are still coming. The four young composers whose works will be performed, grew up with the experience of Amadinda concerts, and this is clearly reflected in their musical thinking and their confident writing for these special instruments. Amadinda have remained true to their basic philosophy: they have not put together a retrospective programme for this anniversary occasion, but have selected from compositions by the youngest generation, the “music of the future”.

On the night of March 24, 1945 a strange party lasting till dawn was held in the castle of Rechnitz [formerly Rohonc] in Burgenland. As the “highlight” of the evening the Nazi leaders who were the guests of Countess Margit Batthyány shot close to two hundred Hungarian Jewish forced labourers. No one has ever been called to account: the countess fled in time to Switzerland before the German capitulation. She lived there until her death in 1989 and it was from here that she helped those directly responsible for the massacre to flee abroad. She was never brought to trial for her deeds.
In her recently premièred drama, Elfriede Jelinek, one of the most autonomous and provocative writers of our time, winner of the Nobel Prize, Jelinek makes no attempt to reconstruct the event: her look into the past is more of an archeology of language, an attempt to reveal the touched-up details of the crime, but also an attempt to speak of the contemporary dealing with the past.The première was held not in Austria but in Munich, the city that played such an important role in Hitler’s rise to power, where the performance directed by Jossi Wieler was one of the outstandingly important events of the past season. Jossi Wieler was born in Switzerland. From 1972-1980 he lived in Tel Aviv, where he studied direction and where he staged his first plays at Habima Theater.