Laszlo Gati

Gati, Laszlo

Laszlo Gati. Conductor, violinist, violist, b Timisoara, Rumania, 25 Sep 1925. He studied first in Rumania but moved in 1946 to Budapest, where he attended the Academy of Music and the National Cons and played in the Hungarian State Orchestra. His teachers were Dezsö Rados (violin), János Ferencsik (conducting), Sándor Veress and Pál Jardanyi (composition), and Zoltán Kodály (Hungarian folk music). He taught violin 1953-6 at the Budapest Cons and worked 1954-6 with the Hungarian Radio. He emigrated to Canada in 1957 and was a violist with the MSO under Igor Markevitch (with whom he studied) and Zubin Mehta. While in Montreal he conducted the Montreal Philharmonia in 1958 and founded the Montreal Chamber Orchestra in 1959. He studied with Hans Swarowsky in Nice in 1964 on a Canada Council grant. He was conductor of the Victoria Symphony Orchestra 1967-78. He conducted in Columbia and Venezuela in 1978, in Rumania in 1983, and was music director of the Windsor Symphony Orchestra 1979-85. He moved to Vancouver in 1989 and has continued to guest conduct, and to lecture on musical subjects for the Vancouver school board and for the Cunard line music tours. Gati is a gifted exponent of the romantic composers and of 20th-century Hungarian music, notably Bartók and Kodály, but he is at ease in most styles and includes Canadian works in his repertoire.