György Kurtág

Born in 1926 in Lugoj, Romania, György Kurtág is a leading figure in European contemporary music as a Hungarian composer and pianist. He trained first in Timișoara and then in Budapest at the Franz Liszt Academy, where his teachers included Pál Kadosa, Sándor Veress, Ferenc Farkas and Leó Weiner. Settling in Hungary after the war, Kurtág underwent a decisive period in Paris between 1957 and 1958 in contact with Max Deutsch, Olivier Messiaen and Darius Milhaud; this experience tightened his language and steered his writing toward brief, taut and highly concentrated forms. His output favors chamber music, vocal cycles and piano pieces, often constructed from fragments, miniatures or suites of very short gestures, in an aesthetic marked by Bartók and Webern. Among his most frequently performed scores are The Sayings of Peter Bornemisza, Op. 7; Kafka-Fragmente, Op. 24; Játékok, a vast piano collection begun in 1973; and Stele, Op. 33. A professor of piano and later of chamber music at the Franz Liszt Academy from 1967 to 1993, Kurtág also gave decades of recitals with his wife Márta Kurtág centered on Játékok and transcriptions of Bach. His first opera, Fin de partie, after Samuel Beckett, premiered at La Scala in Milan in 2018.