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.

The piano series entitled Games, written from 1973 onwards, was conceived originally as a piano method. Its early volumes introduced children to the basic elements in piano-playing and musical thinking, and, more importantly still, taught them to play music without inhibitions. As the years went by, the view of the series lost its didactic character. It came to be seen as a document from Kurtág’s workshop, offering a key to his grander symphonic, chamber and vocal works as well.

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 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.

Picture shows left to right: Ilaria Borletti Buitoni, Márta Kurtág, Mitsuko Uchida, György Kurtág (Photo: Bálint Hrotkó)

On the occasion of György Kurtág’s 91th birthday – which is also the 70th wedding anniversary with Márta Kurtág – the couple have been presented with a Borletti-Buitoni Trust award (£30,000) in recognition of their distinguished contribution to the world of music, as well as their long and devoted musical partnership. This special tribute is in memory of Franco Buitoni (1934-2016) who co-founded the Borletti-Buitoni Trust (BBT) in 2002 with his wife, Ilaria.

Budapest Music Center will celebrate the 90th birthday of György Kurtág with a grandiose festival between 14-21 February. The concert will present almost every part of the oeuvre, from the solo and chamber works to the choir and orchestral compositions. Apart from the original Kurtág pieces visitors will also have the chance to hear transcriptions of the piano pieces Játékok for chamber ensemble by Olivier Cuendet, the orchestral version of Zwiegespräch (originally composed for a string quartet and synthesizer), a program consisting of unpublished or barely known compositions and an homage concert of works by Kurtág contemporaries.

The 2014 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category of contemporary music was awarded to György Kurtág on February 10th, 2015. The renowned Hungarian composer was nominated by both the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music and the Széchenyi Academy of Arts. The award is funded by the Spanish BBVA Foundation in order to promote and disseminate world-class scientific research and artistic creation. This honorable prize (worth 400,000€) was presented to Kurtág by the BBVA on June 23th, 2015. As the part of the celebrations (beside the orchestral works by Ravel and Berlioz) Kurtág's juvenile work Movement for viola and orchestra was performed by Philip Dukes and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Euskadi conducted by Jun Märkl.

This winter term the curriculum of the Opera School of the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Stuttgart included György Kurtág’s song cycle Messages of the Late Miss R. V. Troussova and Alexander von Zemlinsky’s chamber opera Der Zwerg. To mark the end of term they will be performed for the public on five occasions at the Wilhelma Theater between 8 and 16 February. The lead part in Kurtág’s work will be sung by the students divided according to the three parts of the cycle. The story on stage woven round the cycle focusses on passion, futile yearning and hopelessness expressed in music and verse. The instrumental parts will be played by the chamber orchestra of the college.
 
For more about the performance please click here.

The chairman of the Royal Philharmonic Society, John Gilhooly, described the concert given by György and Márta Kurtág in London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall on 1 December as a significant event in music history. In the first half of the recital Hiromi Kikuchi performed the eight-movement Hipartita for solo violin, which the composer had dedicated to the musician. After the interval, György and Márta Kurtág played a selection of solo and four-handed pieces from Games and Kurtág’s Bach transcriptions. Compositions which had originally been written as a homage, gift or message in sounds to colleagues and friends featured significantly in the ‘composed ’ programme that was performed without intermission. The Kurtágs played on an upright piano with the ‘quiet’ pedal always depressed. The instrument’s sound was amplified only to the extent that in the jam-packed hall accommodating 900 people everyone would feel the intensity of the soft sounds and could enter the magic world revealed by the playing of the two exceptional musicians. Their performance and the encore, a four-handed Schumann piece, received a standing ovation.

The concert hall of the Berliner Philharmonic, designed by Hans Scharoun and noted for its unique architecture, opened 50 years ago. On 20 October the anniversary is being celebrated by a gala concert with a programme that features compositions filling musical space in a special way.