Preis für zeitgenössische Musik an György Kurtág

Hungarian composer György Kurtág has won a major award, The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Contemporary Music category

His work in the jury’s view stands out for its “rare expressive intensity.” “The novel dimension of his music,” the citation continues, “lies not in the material he uses but in its spirit, the authenticity of its language, and the way it crosses borders between spontaneity and reflection, between formalism and expression.” Kurtág’s voice, “defies any system, accepts no compromise, and has traced a path independent from the mainstream. Today it stands as an alternative to a vision of history apparently confined to the opposition between innovation and a return to old models, between a music withdrawn into itself and a music that aims to communicate as broadly as possible.” The award is accompanied by a cash prize of 400,000 Euros.

News of the award arrives as ECM releases a new film of György and Márta Kurtág. In memoriam Haydée is a document of a piano recital at Paris’s Cité de la Musique in which the the Kurtágs play Játékok and György Kurtág’s Bach transcriptions. The film, directed by Isabelle Soulard, is available now in DVD and Blu-ray versions from the ECM web shop. 

		Márta and György Kurtág: In memoriam Haydée Subtitled Játékok – Games and Transcriptions for piano solo and four hands, this is a document of a piano recital at Paris’s Cité de la Musique in which the the Kurtágs play Játékok and György Kurtág’s Bach transcriptions. The duo performances of Márta and György Kurtág are distinguished by tough new music precision, underpinned by a quality of affection (“What playing!” raved the New Yorker of a Játékok concert. “Notes were placed with surgical care; inner voices gleamed in crystalline patterns; elusive emotional states were painted with quick, light strokes.”) Játékok has become a compendium of tiny homages, jewelled miniatures dedicated to composers from Scarlatti to Stravinsky and tributes to colleagues and influences. In this special case the whole programme is dedicated to the memory of the Kurtágs’ good friend, musicologist Haydée Charbagi (1979-2008). Interspersed amongst the Játékok pieces are György Kurtág’s Bach transcriptions. The whole programme closes with a beautiful version of Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit .