You are one of the musicians whom Kurtág regards as the most important and authentic living performers of his works. The strong professional and personal relationship between you is demonstrated not only by first performances of significant orchestral works but also by dedications such as those of …quasi una fantasia, the Double Concerto, the Homesickness movement of Hipartita and two pieces in the Games series. How long have you known each other?

I can not say exactly, but certainly our acquaintance dates back to my student years, to the beginning of the sixties. Kurtág at that time had not begun teaching at the Budapest Music Academy, yet somehow he belonged there and was "present", mentally and physically. He was two decades older than us, and we students of composition kept a curious eye on his work and opinions. His personality and intellectual radiance had a powerful influence on us. 

In the seventies all this developed into mutual professional empathy and friendship when, together with Zoltán Jeney, Zoltan Kocsis, László Sáry, László Vidovszky and Albert Simon, we founded in Budapest the New Music Studio which, in the following two decades, played an important part in the evolution of experimental music in Hungary. Among the "elders" it was perhaps Kurtág who best understood what we were engaged in at that time. He listened to our concerts, knew our works intimately, and indeed our pieces served as inspiration for him too, as is reflected in the "homage" movements of the Games series written for us and about us. We reciprocated with a jointly composed work, Hommage à Kurtág, composed for his fiftieth birthday.

As a conductor, when did you become involved with Kurtág’s work?

From 1979 I worked in Paris with the Ensemble Intercontemporain. Sylvain Cambreling premiered Messages of the late Miss R.V. Troussova with that ensemble, but before long I too was conducting the work more and more frequently. That was the first Kurtág work that occupied me very seriously. Later, however, I conducted virtually all his chamber and orchestral pieces worldwide. I remember what a lot of work I did correcting the Troussova parts, clarifying the characteristic “Kurtág” style of writing, which reveals the inner freedom and emotional extremes of Kurtág’s music, which despite its unfamiliarity nevertheless with time becomes comprehensible to musicians. 

Reading and interpreting Kurtág’s scores confronts every musician with peculiar and difficult tasks, both technical and intellectual. It is no accident that the best performers of his works are musicians who have worked a lot with him personally or have been his students.

Kurtág’s scores are special because the performing instructions regarding tempo, tone-color, note-hierarchy and dynamics appear in them as if they were precise comments on an interpretation existing in his imagination. His scores are reminiscent of the scientifically precise notation used by the folk music researchers Bartók, Kodály and Lajtha, which for every note convey the fine shades of intonation and articulation of the peasant singer’s performing style. It is interesting, however, that as composers Bartók, Kodály and Lajtha did not make use of this method of notation: they wrote down their works in a manner adapted to musicians brought up in the classical performing tradition. Kurtág’s idiosyncratic notation is unusually brave even today, or rather it indicates that he has found the most appropriate method of notation for his own musical style, which in a certain sense forces performers to accommodate to his music and to that end widen their repertoire of expression. The powerful effect of Kurtág’s art unfolds of its own accord when his works are played with sensitivity and openness to their special demands, and a musician who senses this becomes a dedicated performer of this music.

Through studying and conducting his works I came to realize that it is not enough to analyze his scores for myself; I have to become their interpreter, and I have to develop a method that enables me to mediate a dialogue between these very individual score images and the musicians. For example, I vividly remember the difficulties I encountered in the rehearsals preceding the 1988 Berlin premiere of …quasi una fantasia. Kurtág took part in those rehearsals, and the excellent musicians of the Ensemble Modern, thoroughly experienced in every field of West European contemporary music, had to face the realization that with Kurtág interpretation of the written notes and performing instructions does not work in the customary way, and that in order to give an authentic performance of his works it is necessary to be familiar with every gesture of his music and also, to a certain degree, its cultural roots.

Has Kurtág’s music influenced you as a composer as well?

Very strongly, but not in the stylistic sense. It is rather its freedom that has influenced me, and its virtual "unstructuredness". Scores written by composers who compose in a strictly structured form tempt one to the sort of analysis that reveals the composer’s way of thinking. Kurtág’s music is not of that kind. I don’t look for the "structure" in it, because that would contradict its basic nature. It would be like locking a wild animal in a cage. Of course it has its own laws, but what is most important are the processes taking place, the imaginativeness of the ideas and their emotional expressiveness. From a composer’s point of view the spontaneity of Kurtág’s music has always captivated me; in fact at the same time it has definitely liberated me. Just one example: my Windsequenzen, which I wrote for Kurtág’s fiftieth birthday and which was composed in every detail within a strict system, I made use of as the basic material for my orchestral work entitled Chinese opera, but there I dared to allow these same musical ideas to be imaginatively "free". For me this marked a change. Although I don’t believe there is any stylistic similarity between his works and mine, it was probably from him that I learned the courage of creative freedom.

You both come from Transylvania, both studied in Budapest, yet the genre focal points of your activity as composers differ significantly, probably not only because of the generation gap but also because of the different way in which your careers have developed. Neither of you denies, however, what a strong influence Bartók’s music had on you, or that for you, folk music and Hungarian musical traditions are important sources of inspiration. Does this mean there are points of contact that still lurk in the background today?

These points are extremely important, not only in Kurtág’s music but in Ligeti’s also. I always feel that Bartók, as a primary source, belongs to the present, above all in vertical, harmonic relations. Kurtág’s harmonies to my ear are always natural, listening as I do not only as a composer but with a conductor’s ear as well. I hear the "hidden" fundamental notes in the same way he hears them, and the progression of his harmonies too is always natural to me. Probably a foreign musician not brought up on this tradition immediately senses that somehow we speak a shared but not West European language.

How does the powerful expressiveness of Kurtág’s art affect you? Although in Kurtág’s vocal works there are a lot of melodramatic or theatrical elements, he has only now, at the age of 85, begun to compose an opera. On the other hand, right from the start of your career theater music has been important to you, and in the last fi fteen years you have written nine operas.

In Kurtág’s music the emotional extremes are potent, which makes his style markedly gesticulative. In his vocal compositions all this frequently manifests itself as expressive textual depiction. He followed this path very consistently from as early as the sixties, when this was by no means regarded as progressive in West European composition.

I clearly remember, for example, in 1968 at the Darmstadt premiere of The Sayings of Peter Bornemisza to what an extent the professional audience of the day failed to understand this music, and that to begin with this very intense system of gestures was alien even to Boulez. But it seems that time has proved Kurtág justifi ed, since it is by this means perhaps that his music has the greatest impact. The friendship and untroubled cooperation in performance that has developed between Kurtág and me may be partly due to the fact that expressiveness comes naturally to me as well.

Is his opinion of your works important to you?

Of course! Although with regard to this we are not in daily contact, each of us always knows what the other is working on. Kurtág rarely voices an opinion—and often only years later. But his comments are always relevant and thought-provoking, and whether positive or negative they usually refer to technical aspects or methodology and are always related to the questions he is mulling over at that moment.

What does it mean to you, as a conductor, to work with Kurtág? Do you have joint plans?

Our shared work is nowadays provided by international concert life, since Kurtág’s pieces have become part of the concert repertoire everywhere. In 2009 at the Carnegie Hall in New York we premiered his Four Ahmatova-poems with Natalia Zagorinskaya and the UMZE Ensemble, and since then I have conducted the work several times. In 2012, I shall conduct Messages in Toronto and Stéle in Paris. The rehearsals at which Kurtág himself is present are for me—and also for him—occasions for extremely intensive work, and at the same time friendly, aff ectionate cooperation.

Photocredit: (c) Marco Borggreve