Master Works, Master Releasings

A Celebration of György Kurtág

 

What must surely have been the biggest celebration so far of György Kurtág's music was held in London in April 2002. 'Signs, Games and Messages', an abundant three-week festival that included concerts both at the South Bank Centre and at the Royal Academy of Music, where the composer was in residence. Contemporaries important to him were included in the programming: Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen and his compatriot and student ally György Ligeti. So were imposing forebears-Schubert, Schumann, Mozart, Beethoven, Bartók-with no need for apologies on behalf of the present. Rather the conjunctions showed how well Kurtág's music does what music has always done: it expresses itself decisively, fascinates, exposes something very private in a public forum, opens a new world.
On one evening of the festival, for example, the two concertos of Kurtág's Op. 27, both with Zoltán Kocsis as piano soloist, were performed after Kocsis had played the two sonatas of Beethoven's Op. 27. The frenzy of speed, with absolute clarity, and the tenderness of slow music, with a beautiful voicing of inner parts, were the same in both composers. Close connections were discovered, too, with Bartók, for the acute matching of piano with percussion sonorities, especially in the double concerto Op. 27 No. 2 (with Miklós Perényi tightly passionate in the solo cello part), echoed the earlier composer's Sonata for two pianos and percussion, which was heard on the same programme in a lively performance by students for the Royal Academy. Reinbert de Leeuw conducted the London Sinfonietta in the concertos, as well as in two Ligeti scores: Melodien and an utterly hilarious account of Mysteries of the Macabre, with John Wallace on trumpet.
In another event, Kurtág broke the almost perfect silence he keeps about his music in order to say a few words that would bring his audience inside an unfinished (indeed open-ended) project he has undertaken with a composer of the next generation: to wit, his son, György Kurtág Jr.
Attempts by fathers and sons to work together are often hazardous, but the two Kurtágs' Zwiegespräch shows a remarkable willingness to listen-on both sides, but perhaps especially on the son's. Of course, children always differ from their parents. One of the problems in this case of father-son collaboration, as the elder Kurtág explained, is that the two of them have different senses of time: he measures in seconds, his son in minutes. He could also have said that they work in contrasting media, traditional and electronic, except that this difference seemed to facilitate and clarify their engagement with each other.
Their joint work is essentially a sequence of proposals for string quartet by György Kurtág Jr, leaving room for preludes and postludes, links and embellishments to be added by György Kurtág Jr on synthesizer. For example, the opening 'Tears'-a two-page sequence of slow quartet cadences with the marking pppp-had a synthesizer intrada. Later a string chorale was given caring electronic resonance, while other passages, such as the gorgeous viola melody in the section headed 'Love Story', were allowed to make their own reverberation, in the ear and mind. On the other hand, a shadow dance for quartet at the end left room for the synthesizer to sign off with a flourish.
The performances indicated that the younger Kurtág's contribution is thoroughly prepared, but that he also has the opportunity to respond immediately to what is coming from the string players (the Arditti Quartet, in most excellent form). It would be wonderful if the means could be found that would let his father also take part spontaneously. As presented here, Zwiegespräch was, very nearly, instant music: some of it was written only a few days before, and little remained from previous performances. Nevertheless, if the quartet Kurtág could provide malleable material for his players, permitting them to respond on the spot to whatever sounds are produced by the synthesizer Kurtág, the dialogue might be so much more engrossing.
A short film, Men's Doubles, suggested what might happen. Here father and son were seen pacing around a studio, improvising on an electronic keyboard. One would play a melody, the other would play a melody. They would both think, with the same gesture of fingers cupped around the mouth and chin. This went on for a while until, purposefully, the older Kurtág strode to the keyboard and jabbed one note. His son raced to respond. Suddenly, sparks were flying.
The electricity of that moment is in each of Kurtág's pieces. London was feeling the jolts.