Artist database

May 25, 1928, Budapest - March 7, 2007, Budapest

He studied composition at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music with János Visky. For fifteen years he was music director of the National Theatre (1951-1966) and between 1974-1979 he performed the same function at the municipal Operetta Theatre. Since leaving that institution, he has been a freelance composer.

Hidas is a highly prolific composer who firmly believes in tunes and harmonies in a traditional sense of those terms and always writes in an easily accessible idiom. His oeuvre covers the entire gamut of genres: operas, ballets, concertos, orchestral, chamber, solo and choral music. He is particularly well known in the world for his woodwind and brass chamber music and for his works for wind orchestra. Hidas has received a considerable number of compositions by ballet companies, the State Opera House, Radio stations, Universities and various musical societies. Many of his compositions have been written at the request of soloists, ensembles and conductors in Hungary and abroad. In 1993 he was awarded with Béla Bartók-Ditta Pásztory Prize.