Search - Kurt Widmer, Gyorgy Kurtag :: György Kurtág: Signs, Games and Messages

Worth a try, for sure

Nicholas McWhirter | Dallas, Texas USA | 07/24/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This recording came out yesterday and I picked it up today having never heard of the composer or his music. Upon a first listening to my relatively well travelled ear, this work is challenging and mysterious. Kurtag is walking a path that has been tread by a few before him, like Bartok, for example who has a similar musical language. The liner notes put it more academically: "If ever justice has been done to Schoenberg's dictum that music should not be decorative, but truthful, then it is here, where differentiation and intimacy are coupled with outward austerity."As a whole, the music is introspective, dark, and at times, dissonant. The experience of listening to it for the first time was like finding a book with no cover, and opening it to find fragments of words and phrases which were the analog output of someone's soul. I look forward to putting some mileage on the disc getting to know the composer's own very unique language."

Three powerful chamber works

R. Hutchinson | a world ruled by fossil fuels and fossil minds | 06/03/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The first music of Gyorgy Kurtag that I heard was his string quartets, fantastic pieces that apply Webernian concentration to Bartokian materials (see my reviews of the recordings by the Keller Quartet and the Arditti Quartet). Next I listened to the KAFKA FRAGMENTS, 40 small pieces for soprano and violin (see my review). This 2003 ECM disc, the latest Kurtag recording, combines both vocals and strings -- "Holderlin-Gesange" is a set of six poems for solo baritone voice (Kurt Widmer, who is amazing) -- five by Holderlin, and one poem about Holderlin by Celan. "Signs, Games and Messages" is a set of 19 small pieces for string trio (the Orlando Trio -- Hiromi Kikuchi, violin; Ken Hakii, viola; Stefan Metz, cello). And "...pas a pas -- nulle part..." is a set of 34 small pieces for baritone, string trio and percussion (Mircea Ardeleanu), setting to music "gloomy French doggerel" written by Samuel Beckett between 1937 and 1939. This is extremely austere art music, and the black-and-white cover photo, mainly black with white traces, is an accurate indication of the music within. It is a brilliant contination of both Kurtag's music for strings and his vocal music. I enjoy the fragments for string trio the most. The percussion works very effectively with the Beckett pieces, and if I could understand the words, they might be my favorite.



Unfortunately, one major problem for me with this otherwise flawless music and ECM packaging (jewel box and extensive booklet in a box), is that Beckett never translated these French poems into English, and so a significant portion of the meaning of the music is lost. Samuel Beckett is one of my favorite authors, and I was at my wit's end when I learned that these poems, published in 1978 and called "Mirlitonnades," do not exist in English translation. It's enough to make me want to learn French! In the meantime, I'm going to have to find someone who can translate them for me..."

Kurtag's chamber music expands to vaster lengths in three ne

Christopher Culver | 10/11/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This ECM disc continues the label's dedication to the music of Gyorgy Kurtag, whose work is increasingly making use of the sort of portentious silences that ECM specializes in. The performers have all closely worked with Kurtag for years and in fact premiered the pieces: Kurt Widmer (baritone), Mircea Ardeleanu (percussion), Hiromi Kikuchi (violin), Ken Hakii (viola) and Stefan Metz (cello).



"...pas à pas -- nulle part..." poèmes de Samuel Beckett op. 36 (1993-1998) sets some of the English playwright's idiosyncratic poetry as well as the maxims of Sébastien Chamfort which he translated into English. While scored for the peculiar ensemble of baritone, percussion and string trio, the baritone clearly carries the bulk of the work. Solo percussion delineates sections of the work, while percussion and very spare use of the string trio highten the expression at certain moments. At half an hour, this is by far the longest single work on the disc, and it consists of 30 whole sections. I feel that some of the vocal writing is not idiomatic for English, and the work may perhaps go on for two long, but for most of its length it is very entertaining. Listeners who are familiar with Kurtag's earlier piece with a Beckett text, "What is the Word?" op. may know what to expect here, with the evocative gaps between sounds, and the fury occasionally unleashed by the singer.



The "Hoelderlin-Gesange" op. 35 for baritone and instruments is a cycle begun in 1993 and still in progress. Book I is represented here, with the first five songs to texts by Hoelderlin and the sixth setting Paul Celan's "Tuebingen, Jaenner". Except for the blast of tuba and trombone in the second song "Im Walde", these are all baritone solo. It's obvious to see why Kurtag found Holderlin worth setting, as the mad German's poetry is so full of expressive possibilities ranging from the harshest howls to the softest whimpers.



The third item on the disc is pieces from Kurtag's cycle "Signs, Games and Messages" for strings. This is a long series of very brief pieces meant to be analogous to Kurtag's famed "Games" for piano. I admit, I haven't listened to these much yet, because the cycle is incomplete and most don't have opus numbers. Nonetheless, within this collection we find another performance of Signs op. 5 for viola (1961), which is a good example of Kurtag's early style, often compared to Bartok compressed to Webern-like brevity. I slightly favour the performance of Garth Knox on a now out of print Naive CD, however.



None of the pieces here really strike me as among Kurtag's best pieces. For those new to the composer's work, I'd recommend the string quartets (Arditti Quartet on Naive), or the "Messages of the Late R.V. Troussova" for soprano and ensemble (Hungaroton)."