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Márta Kurtág (1927-2019, piano) and György Kurtág (1926-, piano), live, Paris, 2012: J.S. Bach (1685-1750, arr. G. Kurtág), “Das alte Jahr vergangen ist” (BWV 614)
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lagniappe
random sights
yesterday, Oak Park, Ill.
alone
György Kurtág (1926-, piano), live, Budapest (Budapest Music Center), 10/17/20: Mártának | Mozart: Sonata in D major (K. 576), excerpt (II. Adagio)*
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lagniappe
random sights
yesterday, Oak Park, Ill.
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*From the New York Times obituary (10/25/19):
Marta Kurtag, a pianist and teacher who shared a 72-year collaboration with her husband, the prominent avant-garde composer Gyorgy Kurtag, profoundly influencing his work and joining him in dual recitals that acquired a legendary reputation in their later years, died on Oct. 17 in Budapest. She was 92.
Her death, in a hospital, was confirmed by the Budapest Music Center, a performing arts complex where she lived with Mr. Kurtag in an apartment.
sounds of consolation
Johann Sebastian Bach, Actus Tragicus (Sonatina), transcription by György Kurtág; Márta and György Kurtág (piano), live, Budapest, 2015
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lagniappe
random sights
this morning, Chicago (Columbus Park)
never enough
Johann Sebastian Bach, transcriptions by György Kurtág
Márta and György Kurtág (piano), live, Budapest, 2015
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lagniappe
reading table
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), talking about words
BBC radio broadcast, April 29, 1937
They play each note as if, at that particular moment, nothing in the world is more important.
György Kurtág (1926-) and Márta Kurtág, live, Kurtág (Játékok [Games]) and Bach (miscellaneous transcriptions), Paris, 2012
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lagniappe
musical (and other) thoughts
Q. One last question—are you a believer?
A [G. Kurtág]. I do not know. I toy with the idea. Consciously, I am certainly an atheist, but I do not say it out loud, because if I look at Bach, I cannot be an atheist. Then I have to accept the way he believed. His music never stops praying. And how can I get closer if I look at him from the outside? I do not believe in the Gospels in a literal fashion, but a Bach fugue has the Crucifixion in it—as the nails are being driven in. In music, I am always looking for the hammering of the nails. . . . That is a dual vision. My brain rejects it all. But my brain isn’t worth much.
—Alex Ross, New Yorker blog, quoting György Kurtág: Three Interviews and Ligeti Homages (2009)
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