The Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin will honor the great composer György Kurtág with a Festschrift and concerts presented on December 11th and 12th, 2015. At these events, faculty, alumni, students of the school and celebrated ensembles and artists such as Tabea Zimmermann will perform chamber works, miniatures, and monumental compositions like the Kafka Fragments and the Messages of the Late R. V. Troussova.

"From every contribution in this volume, a profound gratitude can be discerned for the intense encounters with Kurtág: the extraordinary teacher of chamber music, the great composer and the captivating performer,” writes Prof. Robert Ehrlich, President of the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin in the introduction to the Festschrift. These encounters, recalled by the contributors of the volume, took place within the past several decades in Berlin, in Switzerland, in Jerusalem, in Amsterdam, or in Budapest. The ages and nationalities of the authors are extremely diverse.

Preceding the short tributes and recollections are two major writings, making up the first half of the Festschrift. The first of them is the early “discoverer” and champion of Kurtág’s exceptional genius, the Swiss composer, performer, and professor of composition Roland Moser, who offers the reader an exceptionally expert and sensitive analysis of Kurtág’s chamber compositions, intermingled with personal reminiscences. The other major contribution is a fascinating interview with György and Márta Kurtág, done in 2000 by another Swiss composer and performer, the young but accomplished violinist Helena Winkelman, with the couple in Basel, sketching an overwhelmingly rich and exciting portrait of Kurtág the person and the composer.

The remaining short writings have been contributed by thirteen former pupils, colleagues, friends and supporters like Heinz Holliger, Juliane Banse, Dénes Várjon, and Adrienne Csengery. Some of the authors, like Tabea Zimmermann, Jonathan Aner, and Oliver Wille, will also participate in the December concerts as soloists or as members of a chamber ensemble. In addition, the legendary former chamber music professor of the institution, Eberhard Feltz, who will be speaking with Roland Moser about Kurtág’s music in a podium dialogue, will deliver a “bow” to the composer as a start to one of the concerts.

Other performers will include the Vogler, Kuss, Klee and Berlin Tokyo quartets, the Xylinos wind quintet, Shirley Bill (clarinet), Nicolas Altstaedt (cello), Enikő Ginzery (cimbalom) and the vocal soloists Martin Bruns (Hölderlin songs), Marie-Lou Jaquard, Alena Karmanova and Soo Yeon Lim (Kafka Fragments), and Anna Korondi (Troussova cycle).

János Malina



Photo: Andrea Felvégi