Janos Furst, 71; Hungarian violinist and conductor worked all over world

Janos Furst, 71, a Hungarian violinist and conductor who worked with orchestras around the world, died Wednesday of cancer in a Paris hospital, said Sandor Gyudi, director of the Szeged Symphony Orchestra.

Furst had been artistic director of the orchestra, based in the southern Hungarian city of Szeged, since 2002.

Born in Budapest in 1935, Furst studied violin in the Hungarian capital’s Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music and left Hungary in November 1956, after that year’s short-lived anti-Soviet uprising.

After winning the Premier Prix at the Brussels Conservatory, he worked as a concertmaster and later turned to conducting.

Besides his work with orchestras in Paris, Madrid, Prague, London and Helsinki, among others, Furst was music director of the Marseilles Opera for nine years and taught conducting at the National Conservatory of Music in Paris.

From 1990 to 1994, he was principal conductor of the Musikkollegium Winterthur Orchestra in Switzerland.

Furst also collaborated with orchestras in the United States, Canada, Australia, Israel, Japan and Latin America.