Kurtág’s work for piano and instrumental groups …quasi una fantasia… was performed at the BBC Proms on 30 August at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The soloist was Dame Mitsuko Uchida, and the London Symphony Orchestra was conducted by Sir Simon Rattle at an event held to the exclusion of the audience, which could be followed solely on radio and television.

"I wanted the musicians to not be able to discuss how bad the music was during rehearsals," said György Kurtág at his own expense in reference to this work, which calls for the use of orchestra scattered throughout the concert hall sounding from different directions and heights, which prophetically predicted today's expectations of social distance.

The new volume of Signs, Games and Messages by György Kurtág differs in some respect from the previous ones: It contains not only single solo and chamber music pieces for flute but also a substantial cycle that has remained hidden from the public for nearly twenty years: Scenes for solo flute, written in September 1997 and dedicated to Ádám Szokolay, which had its premiere in 2016 on the composer's 90th birthday. Each movement in the cycle reformulates familiar gestures of Kurtág's music: it develops pensive, impetuous, ethereal or playful characters.

One of the jewels of the volume belongs to Kurtág’s preparations of his opera, Samuel Beckett: Fin de partie: Clov’s farewell song with the accompaniment of a single bass flute.

The Hungarian State Music Publisher, the legal predecessor of Universal Music Publishing Editio Musica Budapest, was founded by government decree seventy years ago, on July 1, 1950.

With a seventy-year history, as the heir to the nearly two-hundred-year-old Hungarian music publishing, and as the manager of the richest catalogue of Hungarian composition in the last hundred years, UMP EMB continues to strive to be an attractive and recognized partner for all generations of Hungarian composers at home and abroad.

True to its seven-decade-old tradition, UMP Editio Musica Budapest is further developing its series of publications for music learners and young people. Recently, two piano collections have appeared, in which prominent contemporary composers turn to young musicians in an instructive yet entertaining form.

The renowned Swiss composer-conductor Olivier Cuendet has been working with György Kurtág for more than twenty years. One of the fruits of this cooperation, an ensemble version of …concertante…, was premiered on January 16, 2020, in Amsterdam with Asko | Schönberg Ensemble and was repeated in Washington D. C. two weeks later. Plans for a recording of Cuendet’s arrangement of Zwiegespräch for synthesizer and orchestra, and a premiere of a percussion version are also on the schedule.

How did you get acquainted with Kurtág’s music? What were its characteristics that most affected you?

Some 25 years ago I scheduled Grabstein für Stephan with the Kammerorchester Basel and, due to a common friend, I could work with Kurtág for the first time, as he assisted to some rehearsals and one concert. We understood each other very well from the first moment on, and he liked my way of performing Haydn! His deep roots in classical music and his natural and unique way to combine this heritage with atonality, together with his most innovative technique of composing are the most fascinating sides of Kurtág’s music for me. Another point is the extreme expressivity and organicity of each phrase and each piece he composes: there is no single note that doesn’t speak or tell something in his whole oeuvre! 

Dortmund Konzerthaus celebrates György Kurtág’s music in six events between 2 and 6 February 2020. The series Zeitinsel (Time Island) reviews the output of “the last living great composer of the 20th century.” Besides vocal and instrumental chamber music, the Westdeutscher Rundfunk Orchestra performs Grabstein für Stephan, a work for guitar and instrument groups, as well as Stele for big orchestra. Such experienced performers of Kurtág’s music will contribute as the Arditti String Quartet, playing four quartets by Kurtág, or Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who blends piano pieces of the Games with Bach. Caroline Melzer will sing Scenes from a Novel and other songs.

A special event is dedicated to Benjamin Appl, where the star baritone sings Hölderlin-Gesänge, an opus rarely heard, twice in one evening. Appl came to Budapest in May 2019 to work with Kurtág on the interpretation. A short video documentary has been made about the visit.

In retrospect, Hungarian composers see the 1970s and 1980s as a golden age when Bálint András Varga as promotion manager of Editio Musica Budapest worked for the international recognition of their compositions. His impeccable English language skills, his ability to connect and his dedication quickly brought success and helped new Hungarian music, isolated from the outside world for decades, to gain international enthusiasts. His work at Editio Musica Budapest between 1971 and 1990 shaped the profile of the publishing house, just as later that of Universal Edition Wien.

On December 1, works for a chamber ensemble by Balázs Futó and Péter Tornyai had their premieres at the Budapest Music Center, and on December 16, Asasello-Quartett will premier string quartets by Máté Balogh and Péter Tornyai in Neuss, Germany. All these works were commissioned by the Kunststiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen and the Péter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation. Péter Tornyai has been involved in both events, and he also talked about these new works, previous compositions and plans.

Both of your new works are somehow in dialogue with the history of music. The same is true of your Bach orchestration, the 5th Contrapunctus of The Art of Fugue, premiered in Leipzig this summer, which refers not only to Bach but also to Webern’s arrangement of Bach’s Ricercar. Is this kind of relationship to the past a temporary phenomenon or a permanent topic in your art?

This has always been of interest for me, and nowadays concert organizers also seem to like these connections. At Bach it was self-evident from the commission, and when I approached this music analytically, I found that I also have to deal with Webern’s arrangement. Interestingly, together with Máté Balogh and Balazs Horváth, I was invited to do some orchestral arrangements of other pieces of Bach’s cycle next year, and I can soon try other ways in them.

On Sunday 27 October, the festival Musique d’aujourd’hui à demain, the contemporary music festival of the Nice Philharmonic Orchestra, ended at the Chagall Museum in Nice. For this important occasion, two Italian musicians were invited: the conductor Andrea Vitello and the composer Alessio Elia. The concert program consisted of the Octets for wind instruments by Stravinsky, Péter Eötvös and Elia himself, performed by the Nice Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Vitello.

Zoltán Jeney, an outstanding personality in Hungarian composing, passed on October 27 at the age of 76.

He studied composition with Ferenc Farkas at the Budapest Music Academy, then continued his studies with Goffredo Petrassi in Rome in 1967-68. In 1970, together with Péter Eötvös, Zoltán Kocsis, László Sáry, Albert Simon and László Vidovszky, he founded the New Music Studio in Budapest, an exceptional workshop of experimental music in Eastern Europe. He began to teach at the Budapest Music Academy in 1986, between 1995 and 2011 he was head of the Department of Composition, and from 1999 to 2013 he was the head of the Doctoral School, influencing several generations of young Hungarian composers.

His works include all genres of music: His earned first international success with Soliloquium 1 for flute at the Gaudeamus Festival in Utrecht. Since the 1980s, his compositions have been regularly performed in Sweden, the Netherlands, North America and elsewhere. His main work is the three-hour oratorio Funeral Rite, which was completed in nearly twenty years, and was first performed in 2005 in full shape. His last great work, the cantata Aus tiefer Not, written on the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, received the Artisjus Prize in 2018.