Kurtág, listening to Beckett

This year, the 27th Milano Musica Festival – connected to Kurtág’s opera Samuel Beckett: Fin de partie, to be presented at La Scala on November 15th – focuses on the oeuvre of György Kurtág. From October 21st to November 26th, 22 concerts provide an overview of the composer's work: instrumental and vocal pieces, chamber and orchestral music. The festival presents Kurtág's conversations with his forerunners and contemporaries (Bach, Schubert, Bartók, Stravinsky, Ligeti) and the emergence of important topics of modernity in his art. In connection with the opera, special attention is paid to the works related to Beckett's writings, such as What is the Word or Pascal Dusapin’s Watt for trombone and orchestra.

Gergely Madaras with the Kurtág-couple and György Kurtág Jr.

At the opening concert, La Scala's orchestra was directed by Gergely Madaras. György Kurtág Jr., who also played on synthesizer, presented Zwiegespräch, written together with his father; the  original string quartet parts of Kurtág have been set for orchestra by Olivier Cuendet. In this composition – as one of the critics claimed – "two ways of thinking and performing music" came into dialogue with each other. Two days later Quartetto Prometeo performed Italian premiere of some compositions for string quartets (Secreta – In memoriam László Dobszay, Clov’s last monologue) besides Hommage à András Mihály – 12 microludes and 6 Moments musicaux.

György Kurtág Jr. and Gergely Madaras in La Scala (photo by Margherita Busacca)

In the forthcoming concerts in November there come performances of such well-known compositions like Messages of the Late R. V Troussova (sung by Natalia Zagorinskaya, directed by Andrea Pestalozza) and rarely heard works, such as the choir compositions Omaggio Luigi Nono and the Eight Choruses to Poems by Dezső Tandori (the vocal ensemble Les Cris de Paris is directed by Geoffroy Jourdain).

A vocal chamber concert with Sophie Klussmann encompasses almost four decades, presenting Seven Songs on poems by Amy Károlyi and Einige Sätze aus den Sudelbüchern von Georg Friedrich Lichtenbergs, followed by Scenes from a novel. Particular attention should be paid to the concert of the RAI Symphony Orchestra, in which Heinz Holliger conducts Stele and Pierre-Laurent Aimard presents the world premiere of some piano pieces from the forthcoming 10th volume of Games for piano.

Works for clarinet by Gergely Vajda on a new CD

New signing: Alessio Elia

WE ARE MOVING

Kurtág – Cuendet: Games for ensemble has been published

György Kurtág has barely written instrumental works for chamber ensemble, a formation otherwise favored by contemporary composers. Hence, the arrangements of the Swiss composer-conductor Olivier Cuendet from Kurtág’s emblematic collection for piano, Games, represent a significant enrichment of the repertoire. The sequence of 34 pieces can be performed consecutively as an inherent cycle or in different combinations. “The selection is highly subjective – writes Cuendet –, some pieces sounded orchestral already to me when I played them on the piano, others spoke to me through their simplicity or complexity.” These arrangements, authorized by Kurtág, use a flexible orchestration whose range reaches from 4-5 instruments up to a full ensemble of ca 15 musicians.

More about the publication

Announcement

Universal Music Publishing Group is pleased to announce that the printed music publishing and distribution business of its Hungarian affiliate Universal Music Publishing Editio Musica Budapest Zeneműkiadó Kft. has been transferred to a new entity, Editio Musica Budapest Zeneműkiadó Kft. EMBZ will be owned and managed by a group led by UMPEMB Director of Printed Music László Sigrai. Long-time UMPEMB Managing Director Antal Boronkay will also participate in the direction of EMBZ.

EMBZ will distribute all existing UMPEMB printed music products, and will work closely with UMPEMB to continue to develop new high-quality printed music products in both physical and digital form for the educational and performance markets. EMBZ will also continue to distribute sheet music products of other publishers.

For information, please contact:

For UMPG: Tünde Szitha, szitha­@­emb.hu, www.umpemb.com

For EMBZ: László Sigrai, sigrai­@­emb.hu, www.emb.hu

The well awaited 9th volume of GAMES by György Kurtág is published

Works by Kurtág, Eötvös and young Hungarian composers in Zürich

The beginning of Máté Balogh’s, Máté Bella’s, Péter Tornyai’s and Balázs Horváth’s musical career is in many ways tied to Péter Eötvös, who was their driving force in the past few years. It is therefore no surprise that the majority of the programme of the Peter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation’s (which Eötvös founded in 2004) concert in Zurich on 26 June consists of works composed between 2010 and 2016 by these young composers. Jam Quartet by Máté Balogh, Chuang Tzu’s Dream by Máté Bella, QuatreQuatuors by Péter Tornyai will be performed for the first time in Switzerland, pikokosmos = millikosmos by Balázs Horváth will be premiered in Zurich. The audience in the Tonhalle will hear the music of three generations. Apart from the Swiss premiere of Eötvös’s da capo (Mit Fragmenten aus W. A. Mozart’s Fragmenten), Kurtág’s Brefs Messages will also be performed. The program is conducted by Eötvös himself, performed by the THReNSeMBle, the ensemble of the Contemporary Music Foundation.

More on the concert...

Premieres in Frankfurt – The Works of László Tihanyi and Gergely Vajda