Istvan Kardos

Born June 6, 1891 in Debrecen, Hungary. Studied at the Music Academy in Budapest. Worked as a teacher, correpetitor and conductor in Budapest until he left Hungary in the mid-1920s. Married to opera singer Olga Váradi. In 1929 he took over the Abel-Quartet which he led until mid-1932 when he founded his own vocal quartet, Kardosch-Saenger. Was forced to leave Berlin in 1935 because he was of Jewish descent. Worked as a theatre conductor in Budapest where he survived the war and the Shoah with the help of friencds who hid him and his wife in their apartment. After the war, he worked as a pianist for Hungarian radio and taught at the Music Academy and the Academy for Film and theatre. He set to music hundreds of poems mostly by Hungarian authors, and composed a wide variety of music (piano concerts, choral works, chamber music, symphonies etc.). Also worked as a gtranslator of poems, songs and operas, and as a music journalist. He died on December 25, 1975.