CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
György And Márta Kurtág
Hiromi Kikuchi

Zankel Hall
Sunday, February 1st, 2009 at 7:30 PM

György Kurtág, Upright Piano
Márta Kurtág, Upright Piano
Hiromi Kikuchi, Violin

GYÖRGY KURTÁG Hipartita for Solo Violin, Op. 43
GYÖRGY KURTÁG Transcriptions and Selections from Játékok

Encores:
BACH Chorale Prelude on "Gott, durch deine Güte," BWV 600
BACH Chorale: "Danket dem Herren," BWV 286

Celebrating Hungary is sponsored by Erste Group.

Program Notes:

GYÖRGY KURTÁG (b. 1926)Hipartita for Solo Violin, Op. 43 (US Premiere); Transcriptions and Selections from Játékok

György Kurtág was born into a Jewish family in 1926 in Lugoj, Romania, in the Banat Region. He studied at Budapest’s Ferenc Liszt Academy, where he met both György Ligeti and his wife. But it was not until moving to Paris in the 1950s that he came to understand who he was as an artist. It was there, studying composition with both Olivier Messaien and Darius Milhaud, he fell under the influence of psychologist Marianne Stein, to whom he dedicated his first string quartet, his Opus One, written after his return to Budapest in 1959. These miniatures—six movements, the sum of which clocks in at just under 15 minutes—were the first stop on Kurtág’s unflinching course, the very same path he pursues today: the small, carefully crafted work; the short, densely packed musical scena in hot pursuit of a singular idea—or the concatenation of such small, weightless moments into a large-scale puzzle of a piece, the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. In light of this ethos, it comes as little surprise that during his Paris years Kurtág also fell under the spell of the composer Anton Webern’s aphoristic pieces and the revolutionary work of author Samuel Beckett (whose words he set many times). They were all toiling in similar aesthetic gardens, and like these artists, Kurtág was and is purist. His music tells an honest and exposed personal story, a song that palpably wells up in each micro-composition, only occasionally bursting forth. For quite some time, he found no way to fashion these small ideas for large forces; until 1994, when he wrote a piece for the Berliner Philharmoniker, his music comprised mostly small instrumental and vocal works.

While in Paris, Kurtág—who underwent a regiment of personal bettering, a monastic fasting, exercise regimen, and spate of proscribed reading, what Eichler aptly labels a “zero hour of the soul.” It was during this time that Kurtág read Kafka, especially The Metamorphosis, and found in the Czech writer another artist with whom he strongly identified, whose methods and stories matched his own. Little wonder, as they both share a stripped-down honesty without pomp or fluff, no note or word wasted. Both create surfaces that seem, at first glance, to be strictly confessional, but careful listening (or reading) reveals that you might think you know the man behind the work, but really, with notions so gorgeously—and, at times, humorously—occluded, one leaves as in the dark as when one arrived. Both artists work at odds, with conflicting notions: expression versus obfuscation, inspiration versus technique, cloying humor versus dark, genuine pathos. From the words of Kafka, Kurtág extracted nuggets, aphorisms (also no surprise) to make his work Kafka Fragments, an evening-length work comprised of myriad small movements scored for soprano and violin. This piece was produced by the Lincoln Center Festival two years ago—with staging by Peter Sellars, sung by Dawn Upshaw—which turned out to be such a surprising success that they reprised it in late 2008.

Hipartita, from 2004, is a solo violin work both written for and dedicated to Hiromi Kikuchi, one of Kurtág’s ardent champions, written as a thank-you to the performer. Like in much of Kurtág’s work, it is shot through with hommages, Kurtág’s preferred medium of expression, an intimate offering written in tribute to a friend or admired artist. Eight movements last 29 minutes, suffused with loving nods to French poet Arthur Rimbaud, pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus, and still-living composer Peter Eötvös (who appeared on the January 31 concert at Carnegie Hall, leading larger works of Kurtág plus music of their friend and recently departed colleague György Ligeti). There are movements with straight-up musical titles (“Sostenuto,” “Tenebrae,” “Perpetuum Mobile”) as well as a movement called “Oreibasia,” named after the famous Maenads, the raving souls who were followers of Dionysus.

Since 1973, Kurtág has been composing short pieces—now eight books worth of music—entitled Játékok (Games), made for him and his wife to play. The work (sections of which we hear tonight) is made of small, playful miracles, each immaculately honed, addressing a single compositional notion. He makes touching references to, say, Stravinsky in No. 30 “Petruska idézése,” though always in his own inimitable and existentially intimate style: this piece wriggles and giggles, more in the spirit of Stravinsky’s Petrushka than in the music of the Russian composer, though, in pure Kurtág fashion, cloying tributes can be heard if one screws up one’s ears. There is also a playful, 30-second tribute to Baroque composer Domenico Scarlatti, which commences with crushing dissonances and ends in lilting melody. There is even a forthright paean to Márta Kurtág, a piece that lasts just under a minute. It begins and ends with startling open chords, between which is a meandering and loving soprano-bass duet laden with melody—blink and you’d miss it, which is likely exactly what the composer hopes—perhaps a man and wife, a composer and his muse, singing together in what is almost rapturous harmony.

—Daniel Felsenfeld

Daniel Felsenfeld is the author of eight books and hundreds of articles. He teaches at City College and lives in Brooklyn.


© 2009 The Carnegie Hall Corporation

György Kurtág, Upright Piano
György Kurtág was born in 1926 in Lugoj, Romania. In 1940 he began studying piano and composition privately, and in 1946 he enrolled at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music, where he studied composition with Sándor Veress and Ferenc Farkas, piano with Pál Kadosa, and chamber music with Leó Weiner. In 1948 he became a Hungarian citizen. He graduated with degrees in piano and chamber music in 1951, later obtaining his degree in composition in 1955. In 1957–1958 he studied with Marianne Stein in Paris and also attended courses taught by Darius Milhaud and Olivier Messiaen. From 1960 to 1968 he worked as a répétiteur for soloists with the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra.

In 1967 Kurtág became a professor at the Liszt Academy, where he taught piano and, later, chamber music. He retired from the Academy in 1986 and subsequently lived in Germany and Austria, becoming a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and of the Berlin Academy of Arts.

Kurtág’s international reputation as a composer was established with the 1981 premiere of Messages of the Late Miss R. V. Troussova, Op. 17, for soprano and chamber ensemble. His quasi una fantasia … , Op. 27, No. 1, first performed in 1988, was the first of several works that exploited spatial effects—an interest that dates back to his encounter with Karlheinz Stockhausen’s seminal work Gruppen in 1958. Grabstein für Stephan, a symphonic work in which the audience is surrounded by instruments, was awarded the Composition Musicale by the Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco in 1993. Other awards include the prestigious 2006 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for ... concertante ..., as well as the Herder Prize by the Freiherr-vom-Stein Stiftung, Hamburg, and the Premio Feltrinelli by the Accademia dei Lincei, Rome.

Kurtág worked increasingly outside Hungary in the 1990s as composer-in-residence with the Berliner Philharmoniker (1993–1994), with the Vienna Konzerthaus (1995), in the Netherlands (1996–1998), in Berlin again (1998–1999), and in Paris at the invitation of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Cité de la Musique, and the Festival d’Automne. In 1998 Mr. Kurtág received the Kossuth Prize from the Hungarian state for his life’s work.

Márta Kurtág, Upright Piano
Pianist Márta Kurtág was born in 1927 in Esztergom, Hungary. She studied with István Antal, Pál Kadosa, and Lajos Hernádi at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. From 1953 to 1963, she taught piano at the Béla Bartók College of Music, and from 1972 at the Liszt Academy. Ms. Kurtág has performed extensively as a soloist, chamber musician, and accompanist, and has also given a number of concerts with György Kurtág, her husband of 60 years.

Hiromi Kikuchi, Violin
Hiromi Kikuchi was born in Tokyo and started to play violin at age three. At age 10, she won the National Competition of Japan. Ms. Kikuchi studied in Tokyo, later with S.Gawriloff and members of Amadeus-Quartet at the Musikhochschule in Cologne. She studied also with Henryk Szeryng and Nathan Milstein.

After winning many international competitions, Hiromi Kikuchi now appears as soloist all over Europe, the US, and Japan. She has performed at many international music festivals, such as Salzburg, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Edinburgh, Lucerne, and Budapest.

Ms. Kikuchi has worked with Hungarian composer György Kurtág for many years. In 2003,
she performed his new ...concertante... with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Copenhagen, and South-West Radio Symphony Orchestra-Germany in Paris and Basel. Since then, she has performed the piece with many other orchestras, including Orchestra Theatro alla Scala in Milano and Radio Symphony Orchestra in Vienna.

In 2005 Mr. Kurtág wrote the solo violin partita Hipartita for Ms. Kikuchi; she performed the work’s world premiere with the Berlin Phiharmonie and Netherlands premiere with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw (which was broadcast live), both in September 2005.

Ms. Kikuchi joined the festival celebrating Mr. Kurtág’s 80th birthday on February 2006 in Budapest and performed Hipartita and ...concertante... with Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra.

This year, Ms. Kikuchi has performed Mr. Kurtág’s Hipartita in Paris, London, Vienna, Berlin, Düssedolf, Milan,and Genau, and ...concertante... with Berlin Konzerthaus Orchester,
Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, and Symphony Orchestra RAI Torino.

Hiromi Kikuchi received the Deutsche Kritik Prize in 2003, the Edison Prize of the Netherlands,
and the Best CD of the Year 2003 by New York Times with Kurtág’s Signs, Games, and Messages.