Those who remember the 1970s, when a couple of Hungaroton LPs represented almost the entire output of this abstemious composer, and certainly the entire recorded output, cannot but wonder at the productivity Kurtág went on to achieve in his fifties, sixties and seventies, and is happily continuing through his eighties, a productivity now quite substantially and variously documented on record. Inevitably it is the smaller pieces that have gained most attention, and especially Játékok. Alongside the complete edition coming out

on the BMC label from Gábor Csalog and friends, selections have recently been recorded by other eminent artists, Leif Ove Andsnes and Jonathan Biss, both of whom regularly include this music in recital, alongside Schubert, Schumann or Chopin. For these musicians—as for Mitsuko Uchida, who does the same but has not so far recorded any Kurtág—Játékok shines a light, or more than one, into an older world of pianism, this light or lights being reflected back. The new illuminates the old, and the old the new.