This disc marks the
80th birthday of Hungary’s
leading, living composer. It is difficult
to think of a better tribute. Here,
arguably, is one of his finest and most
original pieces presented in a superb
performance.
It’s interesting to
remark that he was born just a few weeks
after Henri Dutilleux whose music seems
to spill out of Debussy. Kurtag on the
other hand has often claimed that Bartók
has always been his inspiration. Thus
we have links between masters of the
20th century.
Some readers may know
another superb complementary Kurtag
disc (Sony SK 53290) on which can be
heard two song-cycles including ‘Messages
of the late Miss. R.V. Troussove’ Op
17. What is so striking, as one looks
through forty or more years of Kurtag’s
creative life, is his consistency of
language and the consistently fine quality
of invention. He has not over-written,
and manages to say a great deal in fewer
notes than most composers. It’s interesting
also to consider the vocal lines. They
are mostly conjunct, even sometimes
modally inflected and sensitively written
although not without their difficulties.
But it is the accompaniments which can
be so startling, often digging in to
the text and revealing aspects of it
which can surprise and challenge. That
is the case with ‘Scene from a Novel’
Op. 19 on the Sony disc and is certainly
so here. Particular words are highlighted
and presented dramatically by instrumental
effect.
This is a point taken
up in some detail in one of the booklet
essays, an extensive and enthusiastic
one by Thomas Bosche. The other, by
Paul Griffiths, is curiously poetic.
Bosche comments on Kurtag’s "onomatopoetic
rendition of the textual fragments with
elementary musical devices, allowing
him to probe abysses of the soul with
seismographic accuracy"!
This kind of word-setting
is even more pronounced when the voice
is accompanied for almost an hour by
solo violin as in the work considered
here.
You might be thinking
that this unrelenting sound-world would
create in the listener a passive attitude
or that the work would come across as
dull and definitely not for you. That
is certainly not the case here. Right
from the start your attention is arrested.
The first song, ‘Die Guten gehn im gleichen
Schritt’ has the violin rotating over
two notes whilst a melancholy line winds
around it with a typically aphoristic
text: "The good march in step.
Unaware of them, the others dance around
them, the dancers of time".
But where do these
texts come from exactly? Paul Griffiths
calls them ‘Private writing’, This is
a song-cycle of fragments. These fragments
are diary jottings and aphorisms from
Kafka notebooks collected and edited
by Max Brod. They carry the perceptive
and I think accurate if unwieldy title
‘Observations on Sin, Sorrows, Hopes
and the True Path.’
Kurtag divides the
printed text into four with the intense
second section being just one fragment
entitled ‘The True Path’. The reason,
I think, is to highlight its message
which acts as a microcosm for the entire
cycle. The other sections have between
eight and nineteen fragments. The balance
of the work as a whole is never compromised.
There are a number
of very moving moments. I will highlight
two which are fairly typical. Song 3
‘Versteck’ (Hiding-Places) is all over
in twenty seconds; surely Anton Webern
is the inspiration here. Every note
counts. No word is repeated. The effect
appears random and is very pointillistic.
Banse is totally adept at a song like
this as well as in the longer expressive
ones. She characterizes the mood perfectly.
She pins each note, elucidates each
consonant and carefully places each
vowel. In response violinist Andras
Keller articulates a voice that mixes
and matches and intertwines. Similarly
in song 18, ‘Traumend hing die Blume’.
Weighing in at two minutes and twenty
seconds this is one of the longer ones.
Here, a slow, wistful melancholy, a
sort of expressionism for our own times,
hauntingly passes over you. The violin
is more high profile with the voice
winding its line between longer held
notes. The dynamic hardly rises above
piano. The text, ‘The flower
hung dreamily on its tall stem’ may
remind you of the opening of Dichterliebe;
not surprisingly the song is in ‘Homage
to Schumann’. In contrast the next song
‘Nothing of the kind’ includes many
squealings representing nihilism. Talking
of Homages, several songs are thus inscribed.
The whole of the second section discussed
above (The True Path) is dedicated to
Pierre Boulez, a man who has over the
years promoted Kurtag’s works on several
occasions.
This is startling and
original music, wonderfully performed.
Kafka Fragments is a work which
I am sure will rank as a masterpiece
of the late 20th Century,
and which I can only advise readers
to listen to and study many times over.
Gary Higginson
Juliane Banse (soprano) 
