János Fürst:When János Fürst arrived in Ireland from Hungary in 1958 as a violinist in the Radio Éireann Symphony Orchestra, he joined an ethnically diverse group of European musicians who provided the backbone of orchestral life in Ireland at that time. His ambitions, however, were for greater things.
In 1963, he founded the first Irish Chamber Orchestra (ICO). In 1966 he was appointed leader of the newly founded Ulster Orchestra and in 1987 he was appointed principal conductor of the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra. The completing of the circle, by becoming conductor of the Irish orchestra he once played in as a violinist, gave him great satisfaction.
He felt Ireland to be "the country which gave me a home, the first real home I ever had," and he also believed Ireland to have "musical talent, per capita, greater than almost any country I know."
He was born and educated in Hungary, where his teachers included the composers Zoltán Kodály and György Ligeti, and he studied violin with György Garay. He was a child prodigy, showing his talent by learning Beethoven's Romance in F by ear before he was four, and giving his first concert at the age of seven.
He lost both his parents during the war and fled Hungary after the rising of 1956, leaving his violin behind. He completed his education in the conservatories of Paris and Brussels, where he studied under a fellow Hungarian, André Gertler, who had been a performing partner of Hungary's greatest composer, Béla Bartók.
His first taste of conducting was with a student orchestra in the Royal Irish Academy of Music playing Arthur Duff's Irish suite and a concerto grosso by Handel. He was immediately hooked. "The first time I actually conducted, it was almost a revelation. I knew I had to do this."
The development of the ICO was blocked by Tibor Paul, who was principal conductor of the symphony orchestra and also director of music at RTÉ. He controlled the release of RTÉ musicians for work with the ICO and made it clear he would not make things easy for a younger rival. "I didn't like him," Fürst said of Paul, "but the man changed my life in more than one way. You don't have to like somebody to admire somebody."
The move to Belfast was partly motivated by the conducting opportunities he hoped to find with the Ulster Orchestra. He was lucky beyond his wildest dreams. Sergiu Comissiona's appointment as principal conductor did not work out. His international career took off, he neglected Belfast, and Fürst filled the gaps. In one year, Comissiona conducted six concerts, Fürst 44. With no repertoire and limited experience it was a baptism of fire for which, in spite of the inevitable traumas, he always remained grateful.
He made his international breakthrough by standing in for famous names in Mahler and Beethoven in London in 1972, and within a year he had been appointed principal conductor at Malmö in southern Sweden.
Appointments in Denmark and Finland followed and in 1981 he began what was to be a nine-year term as music director of the Marseilles Opera. The politics of French cultural life were not to his liking and when he left, it was "to get away from the non-musical problems of a musical directorship". Those problems haunted him in Dublin, too, where his honeymoon period was short and he quickly became frustrated in pursuing his plans for reform and development.
He presented an almost complete Mahler symphony cycle over three years and he set new standards of sensuous lustre in the orchestra's playing.
Paradoxically, however, his best work in Dublin over the years was with the New Irish Chamber Orchestra, with whom his conducting of Bartók was especially memorable.
He was explicit about the failings he saw in RTÉ's management of the orchestra. "I wanted to see an indication, a door opening, a person appearing with a brightness to realise the possibilities, the potential and the needs. I didn't see this."
In July 1989, on the day of his last concert with the RTÉSO, RTÉ delivered on one of his greatest ambitions for the orchestra, by announcing its enlargement by 22 players, and its renaming as the National Symphony Orchestra. Fürst, who was in the building, was not in the room when the announcement was made. He never conducted the orchestra again, although in recent years he had once more become a regular guest with the Ulster Orchestra. He had been due to give concerts with them in Dublin and Belfast next week.
After leaving Dublin in 1989, he held posts as principal conductor of the Orchester Musikkollegium Winterthur in Switzerland and as artistic director of the Szeged Symphony Orchestra in Hungary.
At the invitation of the Royal Irish Academy of Music and the Dublin Master Classes, he made his first foray into teaching with a series of conducting master classes in Dublin in 1980. In 1997, he was appointed professor of conducting studies at the Paris Conservatoire, and late last year he was appointed to the new post of head of orchestral conducting at the Royal College of Music in London.
He also wrote a book, Upbeat, Aspects of Conducting, which was published privately.
His notable recordings include Mahler song cycles with Bernadette Greevy and the RTÉSO, and the complete John Field piano concertos with John O'Conor and the New Irish Chamber Orchestra.
He is survived by his wife Sarah, and two sons, Mark and Stephen, from his first marriage.
János Fürst, born October 10th, 1935, died January 3rd, 2007