Gyorgy Legeti

I think it was when I was nineteen, by that time the Jewish laws were already in force and the split was beginning to come about which isolated the Jewish culture.

In January 1944 I was called up by the Forced Labor Service, but I deserted on October 10, 1944.

However, I began composing as soon as I started taking piano lessons.

It isn’t false modesty when I say this, but although I am supposed to be a famous person it doesn’t mean anything to me. I just sit at home and work.

I continued to study Math and Physics on my own, but one and a half years later I realized that I did want to be a composer, and after that I never changed my mind.

I think a composer is always interested in his last work.

I was fifteen years old, and I hardly knew how to play a simple Bach prelude on the piano when I began to compose music, and at the most advanced level. I had never studied such things as harmony.

Well I live in Vienna with my wife and son, and I teach in Hamburg, there will be no changes in that respect.