György Kurtág (b.1926) Signs, Games and Messages

Psappha Ensemble

Signs, Games and Messages

1. Virág az ember - Mijakónak
2. Hommage à J. S. B - Dem Trio Orlando
3. Perpetuum mobile
4. Ligatura Y
5. Virág - Zsigmondy Dénesnek ... in memoriam Anneliese Nissen-Zsigmondy
6. Signs VI
7. A Very Slow Waltz for Walter Levin
8. Hommage à Ránki György (pizzicato - kering)
9. Signs II
10. Kroó György in memoriam
11. ... féerie d'automne - für Hiromi, Ken und Stephan

Unlike his Budapest classmate György Ligeti, who composed major works steadily through his later 20s and 30s, Kurtág was slow to get going as a composer, and only began to become more productive when he was in his mid-40s. The stimulus came from writing children's piano pieces: brevity and immediacy became his watchwords, playfulness his route to the previously unheard, and in this seemingly undemanding form he was able to create an enormous variety of studies, many of them homages to other composers or memorials to friends.

A first book of these pieces, Játékok (Games), has been followed by seven more, and the composer does not seem to have given up yet. Meanwhile, the lessons of Játékok have gone into his numerous other works, and have given rise to similar collections of short pieces for string and wind players-pieces which, like those for piano, provide as much for professionals to reveal as for students to learn. Signs, Games and Messages, a corpus of solo pieces and trios for strings incorporating the early Signs for viola, came about between 1989 and 1997.

Tonight we hear the volume of Signs, Games and Messages for string trio. The first piece, played with practice mutes, is among many versions Kurtág has made of a strand of melody from his first big work, The Sayings of Péter Bornemisza for soprano and piano (1963-8), where it sets the phrase: 'We are but flowers'. Several pieces are dedicated to performers with whom the composer has worked; there are also tributes to a senior Hungarian composer (György Ránki) and a music critic (György Kroó). The dimensions Kurtág had made his own by the time of the original Signs (1961): enough is said and no more.

Paul Griffiths © 2008