Briefly Noted: Kafka-Fragments

György Kurtág, Kafka-Fragmente, Anna Prohaska, Isabelle Faust (released on August 19, 2022) Harmonia Mundi HMM902359 | 58'06"

György Kurtág composed the Kafka-Fragmente from 1985 to 1987, a song cycle on bits of text gleaned from Franz Kafka's diaries, letters, and unpublished stories. Like much of Kurtág's music, each of the forty movements is a dense, carefully thought out nugget of music. The piece grabs the ear from the first moment: in this new recording, as violinist Isabelle Faust plods along on an oscillating major second, soprano Anna Prohaska first joins her ("the good march in step") and then spirals around her in disjointed staccato dissonance ("unaware of them, the others dance around them the dances of time").

Some movements have the chaotic feel of Sprechstimme, à la Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire, while others are lushly melodic, such as the hypnotic "Berceuse I." The two performers are paired beautifully, both up to the virtuosic demands, extended techniques executed with perfect intonation. One of the longest movements, "Träumend hing die Blume" (The flower hung dreamily), is offered as an homage to Robert Schumann. Prohaska and Faust draw out its gorgeous lines beautifully, answered by the disconcerting shrieks of the movement that follows it, "Nichts dergleichen" (Nothing of the kind), which is embedded below.

Faust and Prohaska made this recording in May 2020 in a Berlin studio, which must have been surreal given the circumstances. Der wahre Weg, the longest piece in the set at almost seven minutes, is a drawn-out drone of sorts, addressed as an homage/message to Pierre Boulez. Its text, by chance, captures some of the sense of the lockdown year: "The true path goes by way of a rope that is suspended not high up, but rather just above the ground. Its purpose seems to be more to make one stumble than to be walked on." The same goes for a text that appears twice in the cycle, as Fragments 11 and 25: "Slept, woke, slept, woke, miserable life." After living through the coronavirus lockdown, the sentiments of this complicated piece now strike me in new ways compared to previous years.

On ClassicsToday: Melissa Galosi Playful with Mozart and Kurtág

Playing Games With Mozart And György Kurtág

by Jens F. Laurson

Pianist Melissa Galosi’s recording titled “Games” is a clever recital mixing Mozart and György Kurtág at their most playful selves. The title refers both to the whimsy of a variety of Mozart’s Variations and Kurtág’s series of miniatures collectively named “Játékok” (Hungarian for “Games”) that... Continue Reading

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Dip Your Ears, No. 197 (Crossing Bach and Kurtág)

J.S.Bach / G.Kurtág, Piano Transcriptions for 4 Hands, Duo Stephanie & Saar New Focus Recordings

Aural Godliness

When György Kurtág sets out to transcribe Bach for himself and his wife to play on the piano, something special happens: The fragile wit of Kurtág is married to the eternal genius of Bach and, unbelievably, something even greater than the individual parts emerges. Piano Duo Stephanie Ho and Saar Ahuvia must feel similarly about them, focusing on Kurtág transcriptions (alongside some of Reger et al.), in their delightful album “Crossings”. The performances are a few percentage points short of perfection, but the music is perfection. Bach-Kurtág is a bit like getting G*d injected in the ears. Very much recommended.

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Kafka-Fragmente at Atlas

Charles T. Downey, Ihnen and Muehleisen bring out the best of Gyorgy Kurtag’s ‘Kafka-Fragments’
Washington Post, January 13, 2014

G. Kurtág, Kafka-Fragmente, J. Banse, A. Keller (2006) [Review]

In an interview, Gyorgy Kurtag once likened his working method to a cartoon he liked, depicting “a snail equipped with a speedometer.” It is an apt description of the Hungarian composer’s music: compact, laconic, enigmatic, yet packed with layers of meaning. These qualities were borne out by a performance of one of his masterpieces, the “Kafka-Fragments,” by mezzo-soprano Megan Ihnen and violinist Martha Morrison Muehleisen on Saturday night at the Atlas Performing Arts Center.

Franz Kafka intended his diaries to be destroyed upon his death, but his literary executor, Max Brod, could not bring himself to do it. Kurtag slowly gathered fragments from the diaries and letters, until in 1985, he later recalled, “almost by accident I began to sketch the music to a few selected texts, like a little boy relishing a forbidden treat.” [Continue reading]

Megan Ihnen (mezzo-soprano) and Martha Morrison Muehleisen (violin)
György Kurtág, Kafka-Fragmente
Video by Karen Yasinsky
Atlas Performing Arts Center

Briefly Noted: Benjamin Hochman's Homage to Schubert

Homage to Schubert (Schubert, Widmann, Kurtág), B. Hochman (released on November 12, 2013) Avie AV2281 | 71'57"

Israeli pianist Benjamin Hochman gave his Washington debut recital at the Phillips Collection last year. His new CD on the Avie label offers a glimpse of that Phillips Collection recital, which I did not hear, with two Schubert sonatas sandwiching contemporary tributes to that composer's music. The two Schubert sonatas -- no. 13 (A major, op. 120, D. 664) and no. 17 (D Major, op. 53, D. 850, "Gasteiner Sonate") -- display a forthright touch and an imaginative response to Schubert's often kaleidoscopic approach, piling up themes and textures, but Hochman does not surpass my favorite Schubert players at the moment, Martin Helmchen (who will be coming to Washington, and playing Schubert, in May) and Paul Lewis (whose Schubert recital at the Library of Congress last spring just missed my Best of the Year list). What makes Hochman stand out is his interest in and devotion to these lesser-known contemporary pieces, an interest he shares with his wife, violinist Jennifer Koh. The disc takes its name from the miniature by Ionarts favorite György Kurtág, drawn from the collection Játékok, a minute of aphoristic chords and fragments typical of the composer's compressed style. In the same vein is Jörg Widmann's Idyll and Abyss: Six Schubert Reminiscences, which receives its first recording here, most movements not much longer than the Kurtág piece. Widmann's references to Schubert are more overt and edged with sarcasm, which may irritate some listeners but not this one. The fourth movement (Scherzando) is extremely whimsical, including a moment where the pianist whistles an echo to a phrase fragment he has just played, which gets a good laugh.

Washington Performing Arts Society will present Benjamin Hochman on the Hayes Piano Series in the coming year (February 1, 2 pm). He offers a similar program juxtaposing old and new -- Brahms's Handel-Variations paired with Oliver Knussen's Variations for Piano, op. 24, and Frederic Rzewski's The People United Will Never Be Defeated!, a set of variations on a Chilean political song, which was premiered by Ursula Oppens at the Kennedy Center in 1976.

Kahane and Andres, Dual-Piano Act

T. Andres, Shy and Mighty, T. Andres and D. Kaplan (2010) G. Kahane, Where Are the Arms? (2011)

Gabriel Kahane's flexibility in the pop idiom, which he mixes with an interest in classical music old and contemporary, has made him the darling of many critics. The same is true of composer-pianist Timothy Andres, which made their dual appearance on the free concert series at the Library of Congress on Friday night something to hear, even if the appeal of their music has yet to sway me. The program they performed, with both of them playing piano and Kahane singing for some of the selections, mixed some examples of their own music with that of other composers, all of it brief. The central part of the concert, a series of very short pieces that Kahane described as a "live mix tape," was the sort of programming made to appeal to the iPod generation.

Kahane should be headlining a piano bar somewhere, the right kind of forum for his songwriting gifts. The excerpts from his Craigslistlieder were hilarious, the texts of personal ads fitted to equally ephemeral pop gestures in songs of great appeal. The same qualities were evident in other songs of a slightly more serious nature -- Merritt Parkway, North Adams, and Side Streets -- but this just does not feel like the sort of music that requires focused listening in silence. It is a special talent to be able to accompany oneself at the piano, but little about Kahane's performances of other music was extraordinary. The comparison is perhaps not fair, but we heard the four-hands arrangements of Bach included here, by György Kurtág, played with exceptional beauty by the Kurtágs themselves a few years ago. Kahane received his first musical training as a child chorister (he still had a pretty good boy treble hoot in Andrew Norman's Don't Even Listen), but he required a microphone even in the relatively small space of the Library's auditorium. His voice was a little rough and unsatisfactory for Benjamin Britten's gorgeous folk song arrangements from the 1940s and for a set of Ives songs.

Other Articles: Anne Midgette, Gabriel Kahane makes classical music jaunty, and, happily, no one seems to mind (Washington Post, April 8) ---, Gabriel Kahane, a genre bender musician (Washington Post, March 30) Zachary Woolfe, Gabriel Kahane Is a One-Man Cultural Cuisinart (New York Times, April 27, 2012

Andres made a more favorable impression as a pianist, with a retiring style at the keyboard -- twin Yamaha pianos were brought into the auditorium for the event -- but with plenty of flexibility and flair in his fingers. He was a suave accompanist in the Britten and Ives sets, and his charming way with the three Chopinesque Mazurkas by Thomas Adès (op. 27, 2009) was one of the evening's high points. Adès is a composer who has intrigued much more than either Andres or Kahane -- Andres himself has written that these pieces "are, I believe, the finest Mazurkas yet to be written in the 21st century" -- and if the Library of Congress is going to feature a living composer, I would frankly rather it be someone like him, or Georg Friedrich Haas, Lera Auerbach, or Kaija Saariaho, to name just a couple. When Andres played his own music at the piano, it most reminded me of Debussy, not always the harmonies, but the descriptive leanings: Pierrot on 88th Street like the Debussy prelude Minstrels, and Please Let Me Sleep, both from the collection It Takes a Long Time to Become a Good Composer. At the River was reminiscent of something an organist would improvise, harmonic block after harmonic block enlivened by figuration, capped by a quotation of Shall We Gather by the River in Messiaen-like extended chords.

The Library of Congress has an otherwise remarkable month in store, with concerts by harpsichordist Christophe Rousset (April 13), Stile Antico (April 17), and the Keller Quartet (April 18).

Ionarts-at-Large: MPhil and Dausgaard in White, Blue, and Orange

A very fine guest conductor, a superb soloist—not as a name, but as a musician (though in this case both)—and an intriguing, intelligent program in white, blue, and orange: Promising stuff for a concert of the Munich Philharmonic. And indeed Thomas Dausgaard and Leif Ove Andsnes in Kurtág, Beethoven, and Dvořák delivered with panache.

Kurtág’s quasi-Piano Concertino …quasi una fantasia… op.27/1, for pianist and groups of musicians strewn about the performing space, was commissioned by and written for the Berlin Philharmonic in 1988. It starts with simple downward scales on the piano, gently accented by percussion that sounds like Santa’s Reindeer resting for a bite of nutritious greens, accompanied by an Elf’s harmonica. Eventually a more agitated drum-tattoo calls the charming cacophonous Presto minaccioso e lamentoso to action. The marimba and dulcimer join with vaguely Hungarian flavors. Then brutally, out of nowhere, timpani and brass unite for a thunderous interruption in form of the Recitativo: Grave, disperato that evokes a war episode as might be found in Shostakovich, but more dramatic, not frenzied, and grimmer even. …quasi una fantasia… ends with the Aria – Adagio molto, as sweet and innocent and haunting as

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Notes from the 2012 Dresden Music Festival ( 6 )

I am in beautiful Dresden – birthplace of the (mass produced) tea bag– for the annual three-week Music Festival that has taken place since 1978. After Mozart-joys, Malkovichean divertissement, Bach despairs and delights, and Thielemann’s Bruckner, it was time for a day of variety with, depending how you count, up six concerts.

All You Can Hear

It started with the “All You Can Hear” event at Dresden’s convention center. A promising and interesting concept with Kristian Järvi, the MDR Symphony Orchestra and the (strangely German) Baltic Youth Philharmonic (BYP)… an series of performances that vaguely suggested an open floor plan, a variety of different concerts (orchestral and chamber) to chose from, and active exploration on the part of the visitor who paid a one-time fee of 20,- got a stamp, and was then free to roam.

Except that when you got there, assuming you found the place on your first attempt, there was hearty little roaming, no open floor plan, and no concurrent concerts to hear. Reality proved pernickety on this first attempt at an ambitious and vastly intriguing concept and in the end it turned out a succession of regular concerts in semi-suitable spaces that no one was allowed to enter late, and during which people sat still to reverently listen to the music (including full observance of the ironclad “don’t-clap-between-movements-even-when-it’s-obvious-that-the-first-movement-is-eliciting-applause” rule)… only that they sat in rafters in a convention center hall, rather than on the cushioned seats of a concert hall.

Give the project thick carpets, creak-free seating, curtains instead of doors, parallel musical events, more open minds, and willing, enthusiastic, inexpensive participants (the BYP seems a good place to start) and something wonderful might come of that yet in years to come. The mixed audience was already there, from different social and economic strata, including a legion of tots that were ill advisedly fitted with little DIY-garden-hose French horns. Instruments that proved wonderfully effective in the reverberant halls. “Toooot, tooooooot!” they went, though far enough from the hermetically sealed concert spaces, to do any damage beyond the nerves of innocent bystanders and regretful mothers.

Palace of Culture?

If falling short of its own ambitions, the “All You Can Hear” thing was at least an opportunity to hear a fine Korngold Violin Concerto with Vadim Gluzman (and BYP), a really quite stupendous Beethoven Eighth with the MDR SO, all under Kristian Järvi, and the realization that for all its aesthetic limitations and acoustic difficulties, the convention’s center halls make a better venue for an orchestral concert than the city’s official performing space, the concert hall of the 1969 architectural and ideological sin of the Kulturpalast, Dresden’s “Palace of Culture”. Since the place, home of the spirit of Walter Ulbrich, is unfathomably protected as a listed landmark site, only a merciful fire might one day help the Dresden Philharmonic to a concert hall that underscores, not undermines its value.

There might be better orchestras in smaller cities, and better ‘second’ orchestras in bigger cities. But by that mix of quality and reputation that make the amorphous status of an orchestra, the Dresden Philharmonic is easily the best ‘junior orchestra’ of a city the size of Dresden. That knowledge didn’t help during Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto with an engaged Vadim Repin and Markus Poschner conducting, because you couldn’t hear very much from the seats I had, and what I heard sounded as seductive as Tango-dancing by numbers. Whether the thing ever came together on stage is questionable, if so, it didn’t reach me. A pity, too, because the preceding Coriolan Overture somehow did, and that was a most enjoyable performance. Not the fresh and exciting quality of the MDR’s convention center Beethoven, but well played and with enough promise to make the prospect of staying for Beethoven’s Seventh attractive.

Bartók Beneath the Conveyor Belt

Still, with the third movement of Prokofiev not getting better even as it was encored, it seemed prudent to move on to Volkswagen’s Transparent Factory, the spotless, Canadian maple hardwood floor production facility for VW’s Phaeton luxury sedan. It’s a fascinating place and even if the sales numbers for the Phaeton were better than they are, it’s understandable that VW – a main sponsor of the Festival – is very eager to show the place off in imaginative ways.

It’s certainly memorable to hear a program of Moldavian - Hungarian - Romanian folk-influenced works amidst five-and-a-half ton luxury vehicles in various states of un-finish, hanging on telescoping trapezoids from the ceiling’s conveyor belt. The mind raced to future productions of Die Walküre or the possibilities to stage B. A. Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten. Instead the Kopatchinsky family turned up, famous violinist daughter Patricia (with a terrific Beethoven Concerto as part of her ever-increasing discography) up front, violinist mother Emilia and the cimbalom playing father Viktor in tow. A dapper buddy on double bass provided for the groove in Eastern European, Moldovan folk music larks that opened and closed the recital. I find the charade of really letting lose in such a concert, as properly suggested by such music, always an awkward affair. Especially in front of a (German) classical music audience… But there was no denying that it brought fresh air into a recital that came close to suffering from anoxia at several points.

Not during the Bartók Romanian Folk Dances though; those were played as well as I’ve ever heard. Partly thanks to Mihaela Ursuleasa’s pianism, but mostly because it was endowed by Kopatchinkskaja with the requisite seediness, that bit of musical lace that alluringly, suggestively hangs half of one shoulder… the complete confidence of knowing what she was doing, the ability to do it, and a thankfully shameless joy in sharing it. Which is really just the roundabout way of suggesting that it was authenticity that made the Bartók.¹

György Kurtág’s Eight Duos for Violin and Cimbalom (op.4) tested my love for Kurtág, its pp glissandi softer sounding than the factory’s incessant AC. Maurice Ravel’s Tzigane – even in such a coy and wicket-wily performance – is a work I’ve always suspected of appealing more to violinists than their audiences, and while George Enescu’s Third Violin Sonata (on Popular Romanian themes) is one of the great works of its kind, I wish that the composer had made two sonatas from it. The first movement opens with a magnificent lilting lament but in connection with the Andante sostenuto it punishes any lack of concentration on the listener – before the third movement, just as long but subjectively brief, injects much-needed oxygen back into the affair.





¹ As opposed to the airs other performers might put on when emulating such music’s spirit, which causes little more than vicarious embarrassment. There are various musical examples (Dieskau as Pappageno comes to my mind), but really the best analogy are male Russian figure skaters after the collapse of the Soviet Union who bought leather trousers and rocked out on ice, to cringe-worthy effect and music ranging from Bill Haley to Tom Jones. Or the most brilliant counter-cultural film maker of East Germany, Gregor Voss, and his first trip to the West.

Ionarts-at-Large: Kissed by Kurtág in the Bavarian Countryside

Asked on short notice whether I might like to attend a concert with Miklós Perényi and the Kuss Quartet I agreed well before knowing where on earth—or in Bavaria—the little town of Iffeldorf is. It turns out to be a village of about 2500 residents, located at the picturesque sounding Easter Lakes, a surprisingly convenient 48 train-ride minutes south of Munich. The “Easter Lakes”, frankly, are glorified swampy ponds; a dozen or more pretty watery extensions of the southern shore of Lake Starnberg. But the view is astonishing; just walking from the train station to the restaurant-slash-hotel-slash-community center-slash-concert hall-slash-elementary school gymnasium you get incredible views of the lush green meadows right in front of the Alpine mountainside, with shady slopes still covered by vast fields of snow in late April. Tyrol is just behind them.


The smell of countryside just after it rained, with a thunderstorm lurking in the near distance, is a childhood memory that is more deeply ingrained in my memory than any visual or aural recollection, and en route to Schubert it only seems right to get a hearty whiff of cow, as you pass an ‘inner city’ barn. Surely Schubert wouldn’t have had it any other way. I hadn’t heard a note of music, and already the trip was worth being taken. Fortunately, the Kuss Quartet only added to the smell of cows and the mountain vista.

Schubert & Berg, String Quartets D887 / op.3, Kuss Quartet Onyx

Beethoven, Cello Sonatas & Variations, Schiff / Perényi ECM

Inside the most luxurious, all-wood elementary school gymnasium (~300 students) I’ve ever seen—replete with panoramic window and view unto the little lakes—waited a sell-out crowd for the Berlin-based quartet. A crowd that was larger and better behaved than you could have ever gotten for such an event in alleged ‘music town’ of Munich. They responded very well to Mozart, not surprisingly. Especially because the Kuss Quartet (Jana Kuss and Oliver Wille – violins, William Coleman – viola, Mikayel Hakhnazaryan – cello) took to the first of Mozart’s “Prussian Quartet” (K.575) with great panache and stride. The late quartets are not as successful as Mozart’s “Haydn Quartets”, but in such beautiful and quadruply individual sound, with unapologetic substance and heft, it was an immediate chamber music tonic, desperately needed given that I haven’t had a dose of the top-notch chamber music offerings that can be found in Washington.


The Kuss Quartet’s sound makes no pretense of pandering to historical performance practice, they have a general sound that one might expect in Beethoven, Schubert, or Brahms… and in the resonance of this hall it worked perfectly for late Mozart.


Then, most happily, György Kurtág made a surprise-appearance in Iffeldorf in form of his String Quartet op.28. “Don’t worry, it only lasts ten minutes” was the announcer’s calming message to the hall of Kurtág-neophytes; and those who did not quite take to Kurtág’s sparse and delicate sound bared it with gallant, abstract appreciation. (“Oh, this modern piece, I don’t know… I am sure it must be very difficult to play.”) It probably is… the way it assembles itself slowly, gently, from individual notes and sounds… to eventually come into form and shape over a warm, mellow cello pizzicato. After at a slightly increased level of intensity, it starts that process again. Titled “Officium Breve in Memoriam Andreae Szervánszky”, it is his second (or third, depending on whether you count the “12 Microludes – Hommage a András Mihály”) quartet and works off Anton Webern in its 10 short movements. A felt, fragile, and sympathetic tribute in its pixilated or pointillist (more Seurat than Stockhausen) way.


Miklós Perényi, his hair disheveled, his bow tie crooked, and his suit baggy, looks like a shy turtle on stage; a wizard-turtle, though—as becomes clear as soon as he touches his instrument and provides the silkiest imaginable foundation for the Schubert String Quintet. Perényi is a quintessential musician’s musician who makes no concessions to marketability or PR hounds. Not surprisingly his discography is small and badly maintained. A few discs float about on low quality imprints like Laserlight... and amid that a few highlights: Wigmore Hall recently released a recital of his on CD, and there is a DVD of his Bach Suites available from Hungaroton. Most of the notable stuff comes from András Schiff dragging him along (superb Beethoven!) or the case of György Kurtág being taken up by ECM or Hungaroton.


The Quintet is part of the canon of the almost unfathomably great late Schubert works (harder to fathom, still, when I remind myself that at my age Schubert was dead and in an advanced state of decomposition). Throughout the Schubert, more lovely than searing, there were recurring moments consolation and calm that had a strangely earthbound, odd—neither bad nor expected—quality about it. The quartet’s first violin wasn’t always part of the homogeneity that makes the ensemble, but then also adds to what would otherwise be a potentially bland blend, with its ever-reticent violist and a second fiddle that soft-pedaled after every—albeit rarely occurring—accidentally daring phrase. Miklós Perényi, throughout this, stayed in the background and seemed to enjoy the music-making next to the quartet’s calm cellist, the quartet’s clandestine core: himself neither dominant nor diffident, but always present.

Best Recordings of 2009 (#3)

Time for a review of classical CDs that were outstanding in 2009. My lists for the previous years: 2008, (2008 - "Almost") 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004.

# 3 - New Release

Kurtag et al.., Kurtag's Ghosts, Marino Formenti, Kairos 12902

Kurtag et al., Kurtag's Ghosts, Marino Formenti Kairos .com .co.uk .de .fr

Marino Formenti dazzles, delights, and confounds with his disc “Kurtag’s Ghosts.” You probably didn’t know that you want Stockhausen by way of Machaut, with miniatures of Boulez, Beethoven, Schubert, and Bartók in the same vicinity. This memorial to György Kurtág—works of his are dominantly woven through the occasionally sparse fabric of the abovementioned and many more composers—might convince you that you do. Formenti’s great skill is making you listen anew and wonder at times where Scarlatti ends and Kurtág begins. Superbly played and even more imaginatively assembled. This is perhaps the only inclusion on my "Best Recordings" list that has somewhat limited appeal, but what a feast to open-minded ears!

# 3 - Reissue

Haydn, Keyboard Sonatas & Andante con variazioni, Alfred Brendel, Decca The Originals

J.Haydn, Keyboard Sonatas Hob.XVI 4, 9, 20, 32, 34, 37, 40, 42, , 48-52, Alfred Brendel Decca Originals .com .co.uk .de .fr

For years Alfred Brendel’s four-disc set of Haydn keyboard sonatas was difficult to get in North America and even when it is attainable, only at an awfully high price. A single-disc re-issue on the “Rosette Collection” and elsewhere was an insufficient patch. Now, finally we have the Philips set re-issued as part of the “Decca, The Originals” series. Even if it is only available as an import as of yet (Universal’s different release schedules and policies can be baffling, sometimes), the price has already come down and the excuses not to own this set—especially in the Haydn year—have dwindled. It is, simply put, the best recording of Haydn sonatas and it is the best recording of Brendel. Brendel, who I never found nearly as intriguing and enjoyable on disc as in concert, is everything you want him to be: sparkling with dry wit, precise and lively, bringing Haydn to life before your very ears. There is nothing by way of personality or overt ‘interpretation’ that Brendel imposes on the music, there is nothing wayward or eccentric. With other artists this might mean bland, even boring (as in fact it occasionally does with Brendel in other repertoire), but not here. I like quite a few other Haydn keyboard sonata discs—some of them radically, perversely different. But this Brendel set is the pinnacle and unarguably a must-have.

-> Best Recordings of 2009 #1
-> Best Recordings of 2009 #2
-> Best Recordings of 2009 #4
-> Best Recordings of 2009 #5
-> Best Recordings of 2009 #6
-> Best Recordings of 2009 #7
-> Best Recordings of 2009 #8
-> Best Recordings of 2009 #9
-> Best Recordings of 2009 #10

Kurtágs Play Kurtág at the Library of Congress

György Kurtág, autograph score to Hommage à Bartók (first movement, "Adieu, Haydée I"), Library of Congress (photo by Robert Pohl)

György Kurtág has long been on the list of Ionarts favorite composers. As part of the 82-year-old Hungarian composer's first visit to the United States, the festival devoted to the Hungarian Cultural Year (infelicitously named Extremely Hungary) included a concert of historic importance on Saturday night at the Library of Congress. On April 13, 1940, violinist József Szigeti gave a concert with Béla Bartók at the Library of Congress, two days after the Hungarian composer had arrived in the United States. That concert was recorded on acetate discs, which have been transferred to CD (see this review), and Kurtág calls it an event "sacred for all Hungarian musicians." Continuing the legacy of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, who helped so much to sustain Bartók's late career, the Library of Congress commissioned a new work by Kurtág, premiered at this concert by the composer and his wife, Márta Kurtág.

Hommage à Bartók is a suite of movements for piano, both two hands and four hands, dedicated to the memory of the 1940 concert. György played the first sections, twin movements dedicated to the memory of Haydée Charbagi, a professor at the Sorbonne Nouvelle (Université Paris III) who died in September 2008. Márta played the last movement, titled Mártanak (her nickname -- yet another musical tribute by Kurtág to his muse), and husband and wife together played the middle movement, one of the composer's ongoing series of transcriptions of Bach chorale settings for piano, four hands. It was a typical combination for Kurtág, gentle aphorisms in glistening dissonances closer to his teacher, Messiaen, than anyone else, and the contrasting fascination with Baroque counterpoint and active textures.

György and Márta Kurtág, Library of Congress, February 7, 2009 (photo by Robert Pohl)

At the end of their performance, the couple handed the score over to Susan Vita, Chief of the Performing Arts Division at the Library of Congress -- a space had been left for it in the display case at the entrance to the auditorium.

While the Kurtágs played the new work on the Library's Steinway, they played the first half of this concert on an electronic keyboard, a remarkably sensitive instrument that afforded them a breath-taking control over the dynamic spectrum. They played an engaging series of selections from the collection Játékok, some for two hands and some for four, as well as examples of Kurtág's delightful arrangements of Bach chorale settings for organ, arranged for piano, four hands. (A similar program appears on the couple's 2000 ECM disc.)

Kurtág, Music for String Quartet, Keller Quartet Kurtág, Játékok and Bach transcriptions, G. and M. Kurtág

Few composers of the last century have been so in touch with such a vast range of historical music; in that awareness of the past and of his own contemporaries, Kurtág emulates Bach even more clearly, that composer who copied and adapted so many other composers' works and demonstrated an encyclopedic tendency to catalogue and assimilate what he learned in his own works. On the other hand, Kurtág's tendency toward the miniature -- compact and wry, but never glib -- in some ways makes him the serious counterpart to that supreme clown, Erik Satie. More than the content of the individual pieces, it will be the images of the Kurtág duo, who have been married for sixty years, that linger in my mind: seated side by side on the piano bench, their arms often interlocked; when one played, the other stood by attentively, turning pages, and at one point even assisted with a distant bass cluster.

Other Articles: Anne Midgette, Kurtágs, From Hungary With Love (Washington Post, February 9) Vivien Schweitzer, A Familial Collaboration on Music Defying Easy Classification (New York Times, February 3) Benjamin Ivry, György Kurtág: Great Hungarian Jewish Composer, No Monk (Jewish Daily Forward, January 27)

The first work played by the Kurtágs, the "Canon at the Lower Fifth" from Bartók's Mikrokosmos, Book I, opened the circle that would be completed at the evening's end, joining the two Hungarian composers. The last two pieces were performed by the Keller Quartet, with first violinist András Keller playing on the exquisite 1733 Guarnieri del Gesù instrument donated to the Library by Fritz Kreisler. First it was an incredible third opportunity to review Kurtág's new work for string quartet, Six Moments Musicaux, op. 44 (heard twice last year, from the Parker Quartet and the Left Bank Quartet). In spite of a false start occasioned by one of the second violinist's strings coming out of place, it was another fine performance of a work, not yet recorded, that rewards repeated listening. The concert came full circle with a ruthlessly driven performance of Bartók's fifth string quartet, commissioned by none other than Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, premiered here at the Library of Congress in 1935.

The Library of Congress hosts two free concerts this week, the Mira Trio this evening (February 10, 8 pm) and the Atrium Quartet on Friday (February 13, 8 pm).

Ionarts at Large: Notes from the ARD International Music Competition (Day 8)

The second round of the string quartet competition included all but one of my favorite quartets from the first round: the EnAccord Quartet, whose delectable Schulhoff performance had charmed so much, somehow did not make the cut. But the Afiara Quartet from Canada was present again on this first day of eight remaining quartets vying for a semi-final slot. In front of the six professional string quartet judges (former members of the Ysaÿe, Cleveland, Tokyo/Borodin, Arditti, Orford, and Petersen Quartets) and their presiding amateur chairman, Sir Peter Jonas they started with the Mendelssohn’s a-minor quartet op.13. As much I liked the quartet in the first round, this performance found me nothing but frustrated.

There was nothing that suggested a notable fault on the quartet’s part and yet the music didn’t gel. It consistently sounded less than I know the Mendelssohn quartet can sound like. Would a better separation of the voices helped? Nicer sounding instruments? I was – and remain – baffled and disappointed. And disappointment is not easily cured with the drab 13^th String Quartet of Shostakovich; to these ears the gloomy equivalent of the 8^th Symphony. It’s a difficult work to really get into and it doesn’t grab the listener by the lapels to hold him or her for its to duration. This wasn’t the fault of the performers (indeed, the solo viola parts might have qualified David Samuel for the viola semi-final later that day), but more likely the work. The shrieking was well shrieked, the droning well droned, the batting well batted, and the plucking well plucked. Not enough of this for a semi-finals spot, I regret to say, but a marvelous impression. I can only hope that they’ll come down from Canada to visit Washington some time soon.

The Gémeaux Quartet started with Witold Lutosławski’s only “Quartet for Strings”. Anne Schoenholtz delivered absolute precision and purity – very necessary during the long violin solo prologue – before the filigrane voices of the work came together as a very finely woven silver mesh. Irregularly occurring violent ruptures added an intrusive texture like plowed furrows on snow covered fields. The work is chock-full of intriguing touches (including whale song) and as such a better listen than DSCH13. But could it not have been edited down to half its length and made a better impression, still? The Gémeaux’ Mendelssohn – also op.13 – was less confusing, more satisfying now. Was it greater cohesion, their instruments, they way they breathed during the opening phrase that told my ears something was going to be terribly right with this rendition? Even with a third movement that could have benefited from being more sprightly, op.13 did not now leave the strangely, ambiguously ambivalent feeling it still had an hour earlier.

Last for the day was the Amaryllis Quartet that I had not much enjoyed (and thus underestimated) during their first appearance. Now they played Brahms’ op.51/2 in just the way that heaves the quartet from merely listenable to enjoyable. The way they sailed through the opening with lightness and grace (which needs to be wrestled from Brahms) while concealing the effort this must have taken, was most impressive. Any band that can make Haydenesque slippers out of the sensible boots that are Brahms, is most welcome to these ears, indeed. It got better, still, with the “Officium breve in memoriam Andreae Szervánsky, Op. 28” – effectively György Kurtág’s third string quartet. After the Lutosławski, the fear of Kurtág emptied the auditorium by a third. What they missed was a very moving work of great conciseness in what were six short ‘cells’, rather than movements. The succinctness wasn’t the only evocation of Anton Webern. The third cell with its erraticisms particularly reminded of that only composer who fully understood the virtue of brevity. Strain and stress, dynamic extremes and whispering strings were the hallmark of the second cell, and even with a phone ringing incessantly and workers banging about on the roof again, the Amaryllis did a marvelous job getting through the Officium’s gentle, sew-sawing, and wailing moods (at one point like a metaphysical dance).

Notes from the ARD Intl. Music Competition: Day 2: Viola Competition, Round 1 (2) (September 2) Day 3: Viola Competition, Round 1 (3) (September 3) Day 4: Viola Competition, Round 1 (4) (September 4) Day 5: String Quartet Competition, Round 1 (1) (September 5) Day 6: String QuartetCompetition, Round 1 (2) (September 6) Day 7: String QuartetCompetition, Round 1 (3) (September 7) Day 8: String QuartetCompetition, Round 2 (1) and Viola, Semi-Finals (September 8) Day 9: String QuartetCompetition, Round 2 (2) (September 9) Day 10: Viola, Final (September 10) Day 11: String Quartet, Semi-Finals (September 11) Day 12: Clarinet, Final (September 12) Days 13 & 14: String Quartet & Bassoon Finals (September 13 & 14)

The second round of string quartets ended in the early afternoon so that the jury member Atar Arad would be able to listen to his commissioned work Tikvah (“Hope) played by the five viola semi-finalists. (The ARD Competition commissions a new work very year for each of the instrumental categories which are mandatory to play in the semi finals.) Hearing this particular piece in so many different interpretations in quick succession raised a host of questions. “What makes the value of a piece of music?”, for example. Wen Xiao Zheng, by now a favorite for the final, played it first and the piece sounded every bit as trite as its dedication to “ALL innocent victims of senseless violence, regardless of their ethnicity or beliefs”. Never mind that the latter qualification hardly needed to be spelled out (would anyone suggest that Mr. Arad might feel strongly against violence, except when it affects, say, Buddhists?), but why not throw in a plea for an end to all hunger and world-peace? (Actually, he does more or less call for that in his little preamble.)

Call me cynical, but I find that sort of blue-eyed, mushy naïveté almost cynical itself. “Tikvah” is a modest, twelve minute long composition for solo viola that will be played five times at this competition and then never again. Not that noble wishes are per se worthy of mockery, but at this inflationary rate of high-minded, high-falutin’ dedications, I might as well dedicate my morning’s cereal consumption to the hope of ending white slavery. And tonight, I shall brush my teeth in memory of ALL victims of breast cancer.

Back to the music: Wen Xiao Zheng, who had just put down an immensely polished performance of the Franz Anton Hoffmeister Viola Concerto in D, played the notes of this double-stop étude right (it’s very reasonably notated), but he may not have thought much about the music. It sounded so hopelessly unnecessary that I secretly wished for Reger’s g-minor Suite, instead. The most moving moment was an altered scale. But then came Sergey Malov, another favorite, and incredibly he turned acoustic meaningless and empty clichés of middle-easternish sounds into music. The altered scale turned into a Berg reference, grace notes into allusions of place and time, ascending double stops into a Bach homage, and a little Klezmer broke through, too. If music is as good and valuable as it can be made to sound, then Malov either showed that there might be (limited) merit to “Tikvah” after all. Or he proved an artist of such caliber that he can truly make silk purses out of sows ears’.

Lili Maijala and Dimitri Murrath didn’t follow that route quite as far, but apparently Teng Li did. The concerto part, meanwhile, was very well taken by Zheng and Malov (who played the Stamitz instead of the Hoffmeister). Mr. Murrath chopped moments of terrific sound to small bits by too many kinks. Mlle. Maijala had no fewer mishaps and a flexible intonation, to boot, but managed to make the music sound as enjoyable as any performer did and offered a tone, not unlike Malov, that made the viola sound like a compromise between the violin and cello – not their lowest common denominator. Teng Li’s tone meanwhile wasn’t how I prefer a viola to sound, but her Hoffmeister immaculate. The star of these concertos was the Munich Chamber Orchestra (MKO), however. They deserve the highest laurels for playing Hoffmeister and Stamitz, at a competition no less, with the utmost engagement and dedication… better and more committed than many a regular orchestra during regular concerts.

With the results already in: all but Dimitri Murrath made it into the finale which will take place on September 10^th.

Recommended recordings of the string quartets played so far in this round:

Mendelssohn, String Quartet No.2, op.13, Quatuor Talich Shostakovich, String Quartet No.13, Shostakovich Quartet

Mendelssohn, String Quartet No.2, op.13, Eroica Quartet Lutoslawski, Quartet for Strings, Hagen Quartett (ArkivCD)

Brahms, String Quartet op.51/2, Mandelring Quartett Kurtág, "Officium breve", Keller Quartet