Máté Bella’s new work was commissioned by the Musica Viva concert series of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Composed in 2014, its world première takes place on 20 February 2015 in the Munich Hercules Hall, as part of a Musica Viva weekend devoted to contemporary music. It will be performed by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Peter Eötvös. This publication is the first in the Peter Eötvös Foundation Series dedicated to new compositions by talented young composers discovered and supported by the Foundation.

The title refers to the Lethe, one of the rivers of Hades found in Greek mythology. The meaning of the name is “oblivion.” Dead souls drank from it to forget their earthly life, whose memories might poison their life in Eternity. Tradition also makes the Lethe the symbol of time as a dynamic, flowing, changing entity. Máté Bella’s composition follows this ancient symbolic structure and renders musically the flow of the mythical river.
(János Malina)

For more about the première, see