György Kurtág at 100

Hungarian composer György Kurtág, one of the most strikingly original musical minds of our time, turns 100 on February 19, as tribute events take place in his homeland and around the world.

In Budapest a celebratory festival is currently under way, with an international cast performing a cross sections of his works old and new, in concerts at the Budapest Music Centre, the Liszt Academy and the Müpa Concert Hall.  The programme includes Kurtág’s new monodrama Die Stechardin, inspired by the aphorisms of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, with András Keller conducting the Concerto Budapest orchestra and singer Maria Husmann.  Together with soprano Juliane Banse, Keller as violinist will also revisit Kurtág’s “quiet masterpiece of richness and emotional power” (as The Guardian described it) the Kafka-Fragmente, the ECM New Series recording of which brought new shades of meaning to the concept of concentrated, poetic intensity.

Kurtág has uniquely elevated the art of the fragment and the miniature to explore a whole range of colour, expression and atmosphere in his music – from the playful children’s songs in Jatékok to the haunting Samuel Beckett settings of pas à pas – nulle part in the Signs, Games and Messages collection. Literature has been a major influence and Kurtág has been drawn to writers whose utterances address existential issues – among them Hölderlin, Celan, Akhmatova, Mandelstam and more…

György Kurtág was born on 19 February 1926 in Lugoj in the Banat region, a city that became part of Romania after the Treaty of Versailles. Growing up in a multicultural environment, he spoke Hungarian, Romanian, and German from an early age — much like his lifelong friend György Ligeti, born in nearby Transylvania.

The Kurtág-Ligeti connection has been explored on New Series albums including violist Kim Kashkashian’s Grammy-winning solo album recorded in St Gerold in 2011. Kashkashian had been instrumental in bringing Kurtág to wider attention with the recording of the composer’s dedication to Schumann, Hommage à R. Sch in 1994. Other major recordings of Kurtág on ECM include Musik für Streichinstrumente with the Keller Quartet , the magical Jatékok duos with György and Márta Kurtág,  and the Complete Works for Ensemble and Choir with the Asko/Schönberg ensemble and the Netherlands Radio Choir under Reinbert de Leeuw.  The album Zwiegespräche addressed musical affinities between Kurtág and fellow composer Heinz Holliger.

De Leuw and the Asko/Schönberg musicians –  now renamed Het Muziek – are among the artists celebrating Kurtág at Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw on February 19.