Wonderful two and four handed piano accounts of Kurtág’s Játékok (Games) and Bach Transcriptions by Kurtág himself and his wife Márta. Their concert appearances together have been described – by Britain’s Independent – as "events to be treasured in the musical life of the century…Teasing, caressing and attacking the piano, they literally play games." The thirty fragments from Játékok are brisk splashes of ice-water for the mind, the Bach Transcriptions compellingly beautiful.
Játékok
György Kurtág, Márta Kurtág
- Játékok
- 1Flowers We Are, Mere Flowers ... (...embracing sounds)00:33
- 2Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir BWV 687 (in memoriam Joannis Pilinszky)
05:23 - Játékok
- 3Preludium and Chorale01:43
- 4Knots00:18
- 5Antiphone in f-sharp00:43
- 6Dirge 100:45
- 7Hommage à Christian Wolff (Half-asleep)01:07
- 8Play with Overtones00:50
- 9Perpetuum mobile (objet trouvé)03:16
- 10... and once more: Flowers We Are ...00:38
- 11Beating Quarrelling01:01
- 12Study to "Hölderlin"01:08
- 13Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit (Sonatina from Actus tragicus) BWV 106
02:18 - Játékok
- 14Bells (hommage à Strawinsky)01:57
- 15Furious Chorale00:48
- 16Hoquetus00:34
- 17Palm Stroke00:17
- 18Bluebell00:37
- 19Thistle00:24
- 20Stubbunny00:45
- 21Harmonica (Hommage à Borsody László)00:43
- 22Hommage à Domenico Scarlatti00:32
- 23Aus der Ferne (To Alfred Schlee on his 80th birthday)01:54
- 24Triosonata in E-flat Major I, 1 BWV 525
02:56 - Játékok
- 25Dirge 1a00:49
- 26Dirge 2 (In memoriam Ligeto Ilona)01:53
- 27Tumble-Bunny00:29
- 28Hommage à Kurtág Márta00:46
- 29O Lamm Gottes unschuldig BWV 618
03:55 - Játékok
- 30Evocation of Petrushka (Hommage à Farkas Ferenc 3)00:56
- 31Adoration, Adoration, Accursed Desolation ... (Hommage à Farkas Ferenc 4)01:34
- 32Hommage à Soproni (In memoriam matris carissimae)02:09
- 33Hommage à Halmágyi Mihály01:28
- 34Scraps of a colinda melody faintly recollected (Hommage à Farkas Ferenc 2)02:20
"Das ist ein außerordentlicher Klavierreigen die überraschende Versammlung von 34 Stücken, Mini-Stationen auf verschlungenen Pfaden, ernste und skurrile Klanggedankenspiele. Es gleicht einem Labyrinth zu zwei und vier Händen, in das sich die Lebens- und Klavierpartner Márta und György Kurtág da hineinbegeben haben.'Játékok' heißt soviel wie Spiele. Kurtág hat sie Aphorismen oft nur von Sekundendauer für Kinder bis ins höchste Alter in mehreren Bänden als work in progress veröffentlicht und präsentiert nun eine farbige Auswahl davon. Das Besondere dieser 'auskomponierten' CD: Die zauberhafte Vielfalt von Stilen und Techniken, poetischen Inhalten, Klangfiguren und bildhaft-musikalischen Assoziationen und das wie improvisiert wirkende Mischungsverhältnis des Ganzen. Und Kurtág wollte in das hochkomplexe Puzzle noch zusätzlich vier mächtige Pflöcke einhauen: BachTranskriptionen, die die ausgedehnte Serien-Landschaft wie mit Bergriesen krönen. Musik von glühender Intensität."
Wolfgang Schreiber, Süddeutsche Zeitung
"György Kurtág gilt mittlerweile schon als Säulenheiliger der zeitgenössischen Musik Ungarns, auch weil er alles andere als eloquent und geschwätzig ist. Was er mit viel Skrupeln zu Papier bringt, ist knapp, präzise charakterisierend, originell, bisweilen kauzig und selbst in seiner kargen Struktur ausgesprochen bildhaft. Jedes seiner Werke wird getragen von einem dramatischen Impuls, der aus der Verdichtung entsteht: als enthalte jeder Klanggestus einen musikalischen Kosmos in sich. So mag auch das erste, später paraphrasierte Stück 'Blumen die Menschen, nur Blumen' verstanden werden, das die jetzt auf CD veröffentlichte Kombination der 'Játékok' mit Bach-Transkriptionen einleitet: sieben sich umschlingende Töne, die von den beiden Interpreten György und Márta Kurtág gespielt ein dichtes musikalisches Motto bilden. Es ist dieses Wechselspiel zwischen geradezu primitiv wirkenden Klanggesten und hochkomplexen Strukturen, zwischen kontemplativen, fein ausgehorchten Tongebilden und witzigen, fast wie hingewischt erscheinenden Melodiefetzen oder Techniken, das den Reiz dieser wunderbaren Klaviersammlung ausmacht."
Wolfgang Sandner, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
"Die kleinen Stücke Kurtágs umzäunen Transkriptionen von Arbeiten Johann Sebastian Bachs. Und so, wie Márta und György Kurtág Bach spielen, so sollen die fragmentarisch radikalen Kurtág-Stücke aufgefaßt und interpretiert werden. Ihr Bach-Spiel ist ein Wunder. Warum klingt diese Musik hier so selbstverständlich, als würden die Hände der Spielenden nicht nur die Tasten, sondern auch sich selbst liebevoll berühren' So als gäben sie die Töne und kleinen Gestalten wie ein Geschenk behutsam an den Partner weiter. Der nimmt sie auf, trägt sie fort und gibt ihnen einen anderen Beiton, ehe er die Motive wieder zurückreicht. Daß Musik solches meint, vielleicht in ihrem geschützten Innersten, wird im Spiel von Márta und György Kurtág zu einer unerhörten Offenbarung (kein Wort vermag dem zu Hörenden auch nur annähernd gerecht zu werden). Und die neue vielleicht sperrige Musik dazwischen meldet an, daß sie gleichem Geiste entspringt. Eine faszinierende CD! An die Frage, wie heute Musik zu machen sei, zu spielen, zu komponieren, drängt sich die Antwort: nur so. Aber immer anders."
Reinhard Schulz, Neue Musikzeitung
"Following last year's 70th birthday tribute to the great Hungarian composer György Kurtág in a recording of his music for string quartet which is currently shortlisted for a Gramophone award, the Munich-based company ECM has added to its highly extensive catalogue a new recording of a selection of the tiny piano 'Games' of Kurtág's Játékok. (...) Here are tiny, tight Knots for the unravelling, a Play with Overtones in which chords beat against their own echo, a sweet Bluebell and an irascible Thistle and a set of Hommages: to Scarlatti, mischievously, to Stravinsky, in a peal of bells, and to a Hungarian folk violinist in the echo of a cimbalom. Márta and György Kurtág's two and four-hand performances of these rare and wonderful crystallisations out of ancient musical bedrock are irresistibly interspersed with the intense and quiet beauty of Kurtág's loving Bach transcriptions. As ever, a unique programme is recorded to perfection and supported by thoughtful and illuminating liner notes."
Hilary Finch, The Times
"If any contemporary composer can persuade the musical world that compositions of between 30 seconds and four minutes in length are the natural vehicle for progressive post-tonal music, and therefore for the music of the future, that composer is György Kurtág. It's an indication of the strength of traditional aesthetic values that we still refer to such works as 'miniatures', a label that always implies some degree of superficiality, as if a truly profound experience can only be had from unbroken structures of far greater length. In reality, of course, many large-scale post-tonal works are simply too long: but that's another story. The point of this one is that this sequence of compositions by Kurtág, the longest of which lasts just over five minutes, offers a very special experience as memorable and as profound as any to be had from new music today."
Arnold Whitall, Gramophone
"Kurtág and his wife are the performers here, either alone or in four-hand duet. The range of the vignettes is wide; they are, indeed, a systematic exploration of style in a laboratory spirit. Some use just a handful of notes - the opening 'flower-piece' sweetly intones seven; Beating-Quarrelling chases a mere three. Others, such as Perpetuum mobile (objet trouvé), are bright outpourings of figuration. In Hommage à Halmágyi Mihály, Kurtág turns the piano into a cimbalom; and in the last of the four lovely Bach arrangements so uncannily evokes organ timbre that you suspect electronic interference. Altogether, a marvellously novel experience."
Paul Driver, Sunday Times
"Mesmerizing (...) The concentrated nature of Kurtág's music, rich in incident and pithy in effect, contrasts in an intriguing way with the more expansive counterpoint of Bach. The transcriptions are points of repose, or, in the case of the Trio Sonata arrangement, of untroubled good spirits. They also serve to highlight the sheer impact of Kurtág's epigrammatic invention."
Geoffrey Norris, Daily Telegraph
"A revelatory disc of fragmentary piano 'games' by this 71-year-old Hungarian composer, interspersed with his own moving transcriptions of Bach for four hands. This conjunction of contrasting styles gives a powerful focus to Kurtág's own declamatory, often childlike and infinitely varied music."
Fiona Maddocks, The Observer
Les gestes, dessinés dans la partition, transparaissent à l'écoute du disque, tant la simplicité et la concentration sont parlantes : le moindre legato se charge de toute une histoire, la tradition est en même temps vénérée et persiflée. Rien n'est donc figé dans ce programme très "composé". C'est pour cela que, malgré les juxtapositions stylistiques, rien n'y est composite non plus. L'interprétation charge chaque détail d'une signification appuyée et fragile à la fois.
Costin Cazaban, Le Monde de la Musique
Ces fleurs sonores, d'une simplicité lumineuse, constituent une sorte d'autoportrait de Kurtág. Un autoportrait en forme de puzzle inachevé, où chaque pièce est comme un petit miroir où se reflète un aspect singulier de ce musicien singulier. Souvenir d'anciennes comptines, hommages rendus à des époques (médiévale, baroque) ou des musiciens aimés (Scarlatti, Stravinsky), réinterprétation de fragments issus de certaines ¦uvres de Kurtág lui-mêmeŠ ce parcours musical égrène à petites touches un monde sans pareil et nous convie à une certaine écoute de la musique. L'album permet aussi de retrouver (ou de redécouvrir) l'extraordinaire toucher pianistique de Kurtág, qui dit autant de l'homme et de la musique que ses miniatures.
Alain Galliari, Diapason
"The four Bach transcriptions and Kurtág's little compositions, many less than a minute in duration, serve as counterpoint and commentary to each other. Indeed, Kurtág reveals a Bachian interest in giving the musical note architectural weight, though that assessment makes Játékok sound ponderous, which it is not. Instead, these miniatures are gleefully various, unabashedly inventive. From Bartók, his first (inevitable) influence, Kurtág retained the penchant for Hungarian folk-melody, while the work also embodies a Schumann-esque sense of literary drama and homage. And something else: an almost Japanese sense of economy and concentration, an emphasis on the abstract necessity of space and the silence between notes."
Fredric Koepel, The Commercial Appeal
Following the completion, in 1968, of his Hungarian cycle, The Sayings of Peter Bornemisza, György Kurtág found himself in the grip of a familiar "compositional paralysis". He had learned to accept such creative "blocks" as facts of life: "The child decides when it wants to be born – not its mother" he has noted, stoically. "In my case, at least, it is the composition that sets the rules for itself, and not the composer. If I knew in what form I wanted to compose, if I knew exactly that a piece should be like this or like that, I wouldn't be able to write it. In this respect I have no technique and no knowledge. The music can only can come into existence when it decides to. And then this Something is cleverer than me, and it finds its own way."
For more than three years, Kurtág waited for the music to come to, or through, him. Then, slowly, Játékok (Games) began to emerge. If the fragmentary nature of these "games" gives notice of their composer's identity, the character of the music is in strong contrast to that of the bleaker pieces ("harrowing" is the favoured critics' term) which preceded them. The Játékok collection was begun with the immediacy and spontaneity of children in mind, its starting point "suggested by the child who forgets himself while he plays; the child for whom the instrument is still a toy." This consideration was reinforced by the suggestion of the younger composers at the Budapest New Music Studio that "serious playfulness" might be a way out of silence. The deceptive "simplicity" of some of the Játékok pieces has occasionally prompted writers to draw comparisons with Bartók's Mikrokosmos. Kurtág, however, has cautioned that the collection "is absolutely not a piano method" but rather a celebration of the essential spirit of music-making. He made this quite clear in a (playful) preface to the score published by Editio Musica Budapest in 1979:
"Pleasure in playing, the joy of movement – daring and if need be fast movement over the entire keyboard right from the first lessons instead of the clumsy groping for keys and the counting of rhythms – all these rather vague ideas lay at the outset of the creation of this collection. Playing – is just playing. It requires a great deal of freedom and initiative from the performer. On no account should the written image be taken seriously – the written image must be taken extremely seriously – the musical process, the quality of sound and silence. We should trust the picture of the printed notes and let it exert its influence upon us. The graphic picture conveys an idea about the arrangement in time of even the most free pieces. We should make use of all that we know and remember of free declamation, folk-music parlando-rubato, of Gregorian chant and of all that improvisational music practice has ever brought forth. Let us tackle bravely even the most difficult task without being afraid of making mistakes: we should try to create valid proportions, unity and continuity out of the long and short values – just for our own pleasure!"Márta and György Kurtág's performance of selected pieces from Játékok, interpersed with Kurtág's moving Bach transcriptions, were almost universally hailed as the highlight of the various retrospective concerts mounted in celebration of the composer's 70th birthday in 1996. In Britain's Independent, Rachel Beckles Wilson spoke of the "extraordinary husband and wife duo ... Teasing, caressing and attacking the piano, they literally play games. Their concert appearances are events to be treasured in the musical life of the century. As a pianist, Kurtág is one of the last of his generation, in whom the spirit of a work is captured in the tiniest gesture or fragment. Interesting to note that in his performing habits, as well as in his composition, he displays affinities with both Robert Schumann (who performed on occasion with Clara) and Béla Bartók (who performed with his wife, Ditta)."
The miniatures that make up Játékok now fill six volumes of published music, with two more volumes in preparation, and their scope and range of reference is encyclopædic. The present selection embraces tributes to Scarlatti, Stravinsky and Christian Wolff, to Kurtág's composition teacher Ferenc Farkas, to Márta Kurtág, to Ligeti's mother, to Transylvanian folk violinist Mihály Halmágyi, to publisher Alfred Schlee ... A core work in Kurtág's œuvre, Játékok has functioned as "a reservoir of material" that the composer has drawn on in later pieces, and it is "autobiographical" in the sense that it is a compendium of enthusiams. It throws light on the relationships, both musical and personal,which have, in differing measure, inspired the composer. Yet precision is never sacrificed to sentiment; critic Paul Griffiths has suggested that Játékok explores "every mood except the nostalgic". And, as Peter Eötvös notes in the CD booklet, "Kurtág's music has an unusually vital relationship to the living and the dead. The delicate vibrations of the soul and the triviality of the street seem to be closely intertwined. His sound spaces always hold new surprises for the listener ..."
Emerging from this collection of thirty fragments are the Kurtágs' compelling and beautiful four-handed accounts of Bach's Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir, Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit (the Sonatina from Actus tragicus), the Trio Sonata in E-flat Major I, and O Lamm Gottes unschuldig. As Katharina Weber writes in her impressionistic liner essay "Along the path that leads through this 'composed programme,' one comes upon the Bach transcriptions like the columns of a great cathedral." To which one might add, in the words of Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich, "all roads lead back to Bach." The four Bachian "columns", deriving from Kurtág's anthology Transcriptions from Machaut to Bach, comprise roughly a third of the whole programme. His motivation in transcribing this music was uncomplicated: he yearned to play it, and wanted to share his deep feeling for Bach with his listeners and his fellow pianists. The transcriptions remind us that Kurtág, the "avant-gardist" is a composer is steeped in the whole tradition of European music. To quote Eötvös again: "György Kurtág's musical language and style of composition are so personal that anyone who hopes to be able to makes his works speak must be able to speak 'Kurtág'. But that also means to speak 'Bartók', 'Alban Berg', 'Beethoven' ..." And Bach.
***One of Kurtág's Seven Songs op. 22 offers counsel to a snail attempting to climb Mount Fuji, recommending patience and perseverance. These of course have also been Kurtág's watchwords through one of the most singular odysseys in contemporary music. The pace has been slow and gruelling, and the yield – measured in duration, completed works, and discography – sparse, at least when measured against the relative abundance of the output of Kurtág's friend and countryman Ligeti (to say nothing of the emanations from the camps of Cage and Stockhausen – both, incidentally, Kurtág dedicatees). Yet the fact remains that not a note is wasted in Kurtág's music. And alongside his long journey toward a recognition he has not over-eagerly sought – "I have neither profession nor mission to fulfil" – he has also played a major role in shaping the musical thinking of many important contemporary performers. András Schiff, Zoltan Kocsis, Dezso Ranki, the Takacs and Keller string quartets are just a few of the artists who have studied with him.
Yet for many listeners, Kurtág was a major “discovery” only in 1996. In his 70th year, and with major retrospectives in London, Berlin and Budapest focussing attention on his work, the great Hungarian composer was finally welcomed outside the “avant-garde” enclave that had sustained interest in his music down the decades. The reception afforded Musik für Streichinstrumente, with the Keller Quartet, the first ECM album devoted exclusively to his work (following on from the Kurtág/Schumann album Hommage à R. Sch. of '95, with Kim Kashkashian), has helped his cause. Some review excerpts:
Arnold Whittall, Gramophone: “ECM have provided a warm yet spacious acoustic for scores in which every note – and every rest – is laden with expressive weight ... Kurtág’s music is characterized by a concentrated homogeneity, and, above all, by a harmony whose tensions, and stability, are the result of bringing convergence and divergence into confrontation. The result is as memorable as anything being composed today, and these fine recordings are immensely rewarding.” Paul Griffiths, The New York Times: “Mr Kurtág has spent his life packing the utmost expression into the tiniest forms, and the result is music that will open itself endlessly to attention, whether from performers or listeners. It is often magically beautiful. But more than that it is full of meaning ... This record is bound to stimulate interest for Mr Kurtág’s music.” Stephen Pettitt, Sunday Times: “Kurtág’s music is his own. Its first distinctive mark is the power it releases from pure isolated sounds ... Its second is its economy ... Every note and, indeed, every silence pulsates with latent energies ...” Hilary Finch, The Times: “ECM has honoured the Hungarian composer in his 70th year with a valuable recital of his music ... The unique treasure of Kurtág’s voice, unwavering, unwasteful and minutely expressive, is distilled in works such as the 12 Mikroludes.” Andrew Clements, BBC Music Magazine: “The music underlines the strength and singlemindedness of Kurtág’s achievement; its debt to Webern, certainly, in the miniaturised forms and the compressed expressivity, but also its emotional power and stark originality. There isn’t a bar here that is not unmistakably the work of a great composer, not a moment when the grip upon every facet of his material weakens ... Urgently recommended.”
For more than three years, Kurtág waited for the music to come to, or through, him. Then, slowly, Játékok (Games) began to emerge. If the fragmentary nature of these "games" gives notice of their composer's identity, the character of the music is in strong contrast to that of the bleaker pieces ("harrowing" is the favoured critics' term) which preceded them. The Játékok collection was begun with the immediacy and spontaneity of children in mind, its starting point "suggested by the child who forgets himself while he plays; the child for whom the instrument is still a toy." This consideration was reinforced by the suggestion of the younger composers at the Budapest New Music Studio that "serious playfulness" might be a way out of silence. The deceptive "simplicity" of some of the Játékok pieces has occasionally prompted writers to draw comparisons with Bartók's Mikrokosmos. Kurtág, however, has cautioned that the collection "is absolutely not a piano method" but rather a celebration of the essential spirit of music-making. He made this quite clear in a (playful) preface to the score published by Editio Musica Budapest in 1979:
"Pleasure in playing, the joy of movement – daring and if need be fast movement over the entire keyboard right from the first lessons instead of the clumsy groping for keys and the counting of rhythms – all these rather vague ideas lay at the outset of the creation of this collection. Playing – is just playing. It requires a great deal of freedom and initiative from the performer. On no account should the written image be taken seriously – the written image must be taken extremely seriously – the musical process, the quality of sound and silence. We should trust the picture of the printed notes and let it exert its influence upon us. The graphic picture conveys an idea about the arrangement in time of even the most free pieces. We should make use of all that we know and remember of free declamation, folk-music parlando-rubato, of Gregorian chant and of all that improvisational music practice has ever brought forth. Let us tackle bravely even the most difficult task without being afraid of making mistakes: we should try to create valid proportions, unity and continuity out of the long and short values – just for our own pleasure!"Márta and György Kurtág's performance of selected pieces from Játékok, interpersed with Kurtág's moving Bach transcriptions, were almost universally hailed as the highlight of the various retrospective concerts mounted in celebration of the composer's 70th birthday in 1996. In Britain's Independent, Rachel Beckles Wilson spoke of the "extraordinary husband and wife duo ... Teasing, caressing and attacking the piano, they literally play games. Their concert appearances are events to be treasured in the musical life of the century. As a pianist, Kurtág is one of the last of his generation, in whom the spirit of a work is captured in the tiniest gesture or fragment. Interesting to note that in his performing habits, as well as in his composition, he displays affinities with both Robert Schumann (who performed on occasion with Clara) and Béla Bartók (who performed with his wife, Ditta)."
The miniatures that make up Játékok now fill six volumes of published music, with two more volumes in preparation, and their scope and range of reference is encyclopædic. The present selection embraces tributes to Scarlatti, Stravinsky and Christian Wolff, to Kurtág's composition teacher Ferenc Farkas, to Márta Kurtág, to Ligeti's mother, to Transylvanian folk violinist Mihály Halmágyi, to publisher Alfred Schlee ... A core work in Kurtág's œuvre, Játékok has functioned as "a reservoir of material" that the composer has drawn on in later pieces, and it is "autobiographical" in the sense that it is a compendium of enthusiams. It throws light on the relationships, both musical and personal,which have, in differing measure, inspired the composer. Yet precision is never sacrificed to sentiment; critic Paul Griffiths has suggested that Játékok explores "every mood except the nostalgic". And, as Peter Eötvös notes in the CD booklet, "Kurtág's music has an unusually vital relationship to the living and the dead. The delicate vibrations of the soul and the triviality of the street seem to be closely intertwined. His sound spaces always hold new surprises for the listener ..."
Emerging from this collection of thirty fragments are the Kurtágs' compelling and beautiful four-handed accounts of Bach's Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir, Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit (the Sonatina from Actus tragicus), the Trio Sonata in E-flat Major I, and O Lamm Gottes unschuldig. As Katharina Weber writes in her impressionistic liner essay "Along the path that leads through this 'composed programme,' one comes upon the Bach transcriptions like the columns of a great cathedral." To which one might add, in the words of Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich, "all roads lead back to Bach." The four Bachian "columns", deriving from Kurtág's anthology Transcriptions from Machaut to Bach, comprise roughly a third of the whole programme. His motivation in transcribing this music was uncomplicated: he yearned to play it, and wanted to share his deep feeling for Bach with his listeners and his fellow pianists. The transcriptions remind us that Kurtág, the "avant-gardist" is a composer is steeped in the whole tradition of European music. To quote Eötvös again: "György Kurtág's musical language and style of composition are so personal that anyone who hopes to be able to makes his works speak must be able to speak 'Kurtág'. But that also means to speak 'Bartók', 'Alban Berg', 'Beethoven' ..." And Bach.
***One of Kurtág's Seven Songs op. 22 offers counsel to a snail attempting to climb Mount Fuji, recommending patience and perseverance. These of course have also been Kurtág's watchwords through one of the most singular odysseys in contemporary music. The pace has been slow and gruelling, and the yield – measured in duration, completed works, and discography – sparse, at least when measured against the relative abundance of the output of Kurtág's friend and countryman Ligeti (to say nothing of the emanations from the camps of Cage and Stockhausen – both, incidentally, Kurtág dedicatees). Yet the fact remains that not a note is wasted in Kurtág's music. And alongside his long journey toward a recognition he has not over-eagerly sought – "I have neither profession nor mission to fulfil" – he has also played a major role in shaping the musical thinking of many important contemporary performers. András Schiff, Zoltan Kocsis, Dezso Ranki, the Takacs and Keller string quartets are just a few of the artists who have studied with him.
Yet for many listeners, Kurtág was a major “discovery” only in 1996. In his 70th year, and with major retrospectives in London, Berlin and Budapest focussing attention on his work, the great Hungarian composer was finally welcomed outside the “avant-garde” enclave that had sustained interest in his music down the decades. The reception afforded Musik für Streichinstrumente, with the Keller Quartet, the first ECM album devoted exclusively to his work (following on from the Kurtág/Schumann album Hommage à R. Sch. of '95, with Kim Kashkashian), has helped his cause. Some review excerpts:
Arnold Whittall, Gramophone: “ECM have provided a warm yet spacious acoustic for scores in which every note – and every rest – is laden with expressive weight ... Kurtág’s music is characterized by a concentrated homogeneity, and, above all, by a harmony whose tensions, and stability, are the result of bringing convergence and divergence into confrontation. The result is as memorable as anything being composed today, and these fine recordings are immensely rewarding.” Paul Griffiths, The New York Times: “Mr Kurtág has spent his life packing the utmost expression into the tiniest forms, and the result is music that will open itself endlessly to attention, whether from performers or listeners. It is often magically beautiful. But more than that it is full of meaning ... This record is bound to stimulate interest for Mr Kurtág’s music.” Stephen Pettitt, Sunday Times: “Kurtág’s music is his own. Its first distinctive mark is the power it releases from pure isolated sounds ... Its second is its economy ... Every note and, indeed, every silence pulsates with latent energies ...” Hilary Finch, The Times: “ECM has honoured the Hungarian composer in his 70th year with a valuable recital of his music ... The unique treasure of Kurtág’s voice, unwavering, unwasteful and minutely expressive, is distilled in works such as the 12 Mikroludes.” Andrew Clements, BBC Music Magazine: “The music underlines the strength and singlemindedness of Kurtág’s achievement; its debt to Webern, certainly, in the miniaturised forms and the compressed expressivity, but also its emotional power and stark originality. There isn’t a bar here that is not unmistakably the work of a great composer, not a moment when the grip upon every facet of his material weakens ... Urgently recommended.”
