This year’s BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award, worth 400.000 €, goes to György Kurtág. The award is funded by the Spanish BBVA Foundation in order to promote and disseminate world-class scientific research and artistic creation. Previous laureates include Pierre Boulez, Salvatore Sciarrino and Helmut Lachenmann. “The novel dimension of Kurtág’s music lies not in the material he uses but in its spirit, the authenticity of its language, and the way it crosses borders between spontaneity and reflection, between formalism and expression”, remarks jury secretary Ranko Markovic.

Jury Statement
“The novel dimension of his music lies not in the material he uses but in its spirit, the authenticity of its language, and the way it crosses borders between spontaneity and reflection, between formalism and expression.

Kurtág’s voice defies any system, accepts no compromise, and has traced a path independent from the mainstream. Today it stands as an alternative to a vision of history apparently confined to the opposition between innovation and a return to old models, between a music withdrawn into itself and a music that aims to communicate as broadly as possible.

Kurtág’s music has the ability to condense the most complex meaning into a handful of notes, to reduce it to the essence of musical expression, achieving a concentrated expressiveness with a minimum of material.

Kurtág’s vocal work is a central part of his catalogue, as is his key relationship with poetry; a poetry that reflects his lyrical yet laconic music. The list of writers he has put to music offers a landscape of universal poetry, in a variety of languages where Hungarian rubs shoulders with German, Russian, Romanian, French and English.” (Ranko Markovic, jury secretary and Head of the BA in Music Program at Zurich University of the Arts)



Jury Members
The jury in the contemporary music category was chaired by Philippe Albèra, Director of Éditions Contrechamps (France), with Ranko Markovic, Professor and Head of the BA in Music Program at Zurich University of the Arts (Switzerland) acting as secretary. Remaining members were Cristóbal Halffter, composer, conductor and member of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (Spain) and 2009 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge laureate in Contemporary Music; Martin Kaltenecker, Professor of Musicology at Université Paris Diderot (France); Tilman Kuttenkeuler, General Manager with the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin (Germany); and Paolo Pinamonti, Director of the Teatro de la Zarzuela (Spain).

About the Award
The BBVA Foundation promotes, funds and disseminates world-class scientific research and artistic creation, in the conviction that science, culture and knowledge hold the key to building a better future for people. The Foundation implements its programs in partnership with leading scientific and cultural organizations in Spain and abroad, striving to identify and prioritize those projects with the power to move forward the frontiers of the known world.

The BBVA Foundation established its Frontiers of Knowledge Awards in 2008 to recognize the authors of outstanding contributions and radical advances in a broad range of scientific and technological areas congruent with the knowledge map of the late 20th and 21st centuries and, representing cultural creativity at its expressive height, the area of music.

Kurtag: work list