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New Music which Dares to make an Impact   January 11, 2001

Directly to the bottom   August 17, 2000

The intensity of the emotions provoked by Kurtag's music on me are also based on the contrast with my Mediterranean personality and values, what demonstrates the inmense power of music: there are no nations, no races, no room to disagreement when listening to the language of the bottom.


Outstanding music out of most standing rules   August 1, 2000
  6 out of 10 found this review helpful

This music is made of the material of which human beings should be made of. Fortunately there is still place on earth to find a true breakingthrough musician making its most valuable effort when facing the task of building a piece of himself a piece of art. This music comes from the very tradicional verve of east european classical music but offers a truly new view of it. No folclore is found in it, no political stance, no revolutionary insight view of society or people. This music addresses the inner core of all human beings unable to takle with the questions of life. Those without answers. This music is timeless and motionless in its unique sense of eternity, which somehow comes to mime quite precisely the concept of an instant. However, great effort in this music that, with a similar approach to reality, comes very far of standard impresionism.


Exquisite music,refined structures of minimal emotive means   July 29, 1999
  9 out of 10 found this review helpful

This music reflects a dark aesthetic,Kurtag moved to Switzerland but acquired Hungarian citizenship. He studied in Messiaen's famous class on analysis in the late Fifties,one of the first Hungarians to do so.He felt he had a language inside him, one of musical focus and contraction until he heard the music of Ligeti and Stockhausen's "Gruppen" for three orchestras. His music however is steeped in the European sensibility for structure and a profound dimension without the pretencious accoutrements that usually attach to that worldview. He writes for strings like they are his Mother tongue,like his own children's voices.Here in "Aus der Ferne III" are sparse,exposed, understated statements in the first violin.The genre of the string quartet has always been reserved for introspection,for a private moment,nothing social, or abundant. The "12 Microludes" requires a structural refinement of the imagination,and push the lever of this time-honed genre. If preludes are one idea pieces, then microludes are in the negative realm,left of the number one integer. The plan is,should be extreme contrast, nothing, no musical moment should give itself toward structural cohesion from piece to piece. But here Kurtag's music betrays him, there is coherance at times. The economy of means here is always a player, an element in his music. Kurtag understands the diamond shaped fragments of Anton Webern. But oddly Kurtag seems to be more social in his miniature pronouncements,more with an affinity for some leftover human dialogue as from a coffee bar,as if one is still necessary in order for music to preserve itself.It is a music not of exile,as many might believe,but one of an engaged aesthetic commenting on the human condition,even if a private,self-referential one. The Keller Quartett deploy themselves admirably,they have committment to their playing,impassioned yet tempered by the understatements of this music,not afraid of exposing their emotional constitution,unlike Arditti where such indulgences are frowned upon.