The piano series entitled Games, written from 1973 onwards, was conceived as a piano method. As the years went by, the series lost its didactic character, and 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.
The tenth volume is divided into two parts: In the first half, earlier, hitherto unpublished pieces line up from Suite, written in 1943, to the 1980s, providing insight into the development of Kurtág's musical language. The second half includes pieces composed between 2002 and 2011. The movements, often aphorismic in their briefness, hide associations with various aspects of European music history. Many of them are hommage or in memoriam pieces, or subjective personal messages to friends, colleagues, and beloved family members - and thereby to all music-loving people.

For György Kurtág, Mussorgsky's works have always been an important model. Several of his works contain pieces referring to Mussorgsky (Games III, The Small Snag), and in his opera, Fin de partie, he also refers to Mussorgsky's declamation style. He made these two transcriptions for piano duet in 1989, continuing a series of his earlier pre-Classical transcriptions. The transcriptions were premiered by the composer and his wife, Márta.