Selections for solo violin from Signs, Games, and Messages by György Kurtág (b.1926)

Panaszos nóta (Song of lament, vibrato etude)
The Carenza Jig
Kromatikus feleselős (Chromatic quarrel)
... féerie d’automne... (autumn fairy)
Perpetuum mobile (C)
Antifóna Hirominak (Hiromi antiphon)

Haldan Martinson, violin.

The Hungarian composer György Kurtág is recognized as one of the most original and significant musicians of the modern era. Born in Lugoj, in what is now Romania, he went to Budapest in 1946 to attend the Franz Liszt Academy. Like his friend György Ligeti, he began his career at a time when Hungary was coming under the oppressive influence of the Soviet Union. Both composers felt pressure to conform to the folkbased, socialist-realist models of the time. In 1956, when an uprising against Hungary's communist regime was brutally crushed by the Soviet military, Ligeti fled to Vienna. Kurtág remained in Budapest, but in spite of the Soviet crackdown, he was able in 1957-58 to travel to Paris to study with Olivier Messiaen.
Compared to the quick onset of Ligeti's international fame, Kurtág's reputation as a composer developed slowly. Meanwhile he became well respected, even famous, as a teacher, répétiteur, and chamber music coach. In the 1970s he joined several important Hungarian musicians in forming the avant-garde New Music Studio in Budapest. In 1973 he began an open-ended series of aphoristic, experimental piano pieces called collectively Játékok ("Games”), which led to greater exposure for Kurtág outside Hungary particularly through storied two-piano recitals with his wife Márta (1927-2019). Those recitals imaginatively intermixed Kurtág's music with works by such older composers as Bach, Schumann, and Debussy. Kurtág's music frequently quotes from or alludes to music of the past as well as revisiting his own pieces, elevating the time-honored practice of artistic recycling to an aesthetic in itself. Dedications and homages to such forbears as Bach, Schumann, Debussy, and John Cage, as well as to friends and contemporaries both musical and otherwise, add to the sense of intimacy in his chamber music.
Many of Kurtág's pieces exist in several versions-e.g., solo violin, solo viola, solo piano, string trio, etc.- in various collections called Jelek ("Signs”), Játékok ("Games"), Üzenetek (“Messages”), Signs, Games, and Messages for strings, and Games and Messages for winds. A single piece might exist in several different guises, for example the Perpetuum mobile in this concert exists in adaptations for solo violin, solo viola, and string trio. For this concert, Haldan Martinson has chosen eight pieces from Signs, Games, and Messages in versions for solo violin.

The group opens with the Song of Lament, subtitled "vibrato etude," uses quarter-tone inflections that suggest the wavering intensity of a lamenting voice. The brief Carenza Jig takes its name from a young girl with whose family Kurtág stayed in England. The contentious nature evident in the music of Chromatic quarrel (or perhaps "chromatic retort") is in stark contrast to the equally chromatic but subdued sound of ...autumn fairy..., which calls for the use of a metal mute throughout. Perpetuum mobile is dedicated to the Hungarian-born American violinist Agnes Vadas (1929-2007). There are three variants (A, B, C) printed in the score, of which the C variant is played here. Each opens with the same short "overture" and continues with similar material varied by dynamics, rhythm, and articulation: rising, expanding arpeggios that then fall to a stark single pitch.Following the “C” version of the Perpetuum mobile, the group ends with Hiromi antiphon, written for Japanese violinist Hiromi Kikuchi, another Kurtág proponent; "antiphon" refers to its rondo-like, question-and-answer form, rising chromatic gestures alternating with a variety of other musical characters.

January 19, 2020

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