László Tihanyi was born in Budapest on 21 March 1956 and pursued musical studies at the Liszt Academy of Music, Budapest, where he studied composition with Rezső Sugár and conducting with András Kórodi. Since 1979 Tihanyi has himself been a professor at the Academy of Music, where he also acted as vice-rector between 2000 and 2005.
He regularly conducts at home and abroad, typically 20th century classical and contemporary programmes. He has appeared with all the major Hungarian orchestras and with significant European contemporary music ensembles such as the Ensemble Modern, Contrechamps and Musikfabrik. In 1991 he participated in the production of Maderna’s Hyperion at the Festival d’Automne Paris and in the subsequent European tour. In 2002 Peter Eötvös asked him to be second conductor of his Three Sisters for the 2002 production in the Wiener Festwochen (Eötvös himself being first conductor). In 1985 Tihanyi founded his own instrumental ensemble, Intermodulation, dedicated to 20th and 21st century music, and has been its artistic director ever since.
His first opera, Genitrix, based on the novel by François Mauriac and commissioned by the Opera de Bordeaux and the French State, received its premiere on 25 November 2007 in Bordeaux; in 2008 the performance toured to Budapest.
Since 2014 he has been led master classes in Tokyo at Geidai University and Seul at the Yonsei University. He also conducted several concerts with the Geidai Philharmonia in Tokyo.
Tihanyi has received a number of prestigious awards, including the Erkel Prize and the Bartók-Pásztory Award. The majority of his works have been recorded, released and made accessible by Hungaroton and BMC Records. Since 2008 he has been led the composer departement of the Széchenyi Academy of Literature and Art.