Jelek, játékok és üzenetek (Signs, Games and Messages) for string trio (1989–97)

Virag az ember, Mijakónak (Flowers we are, for Miyako)

Hommage à J.S.B.

Jelek VI (Signs VI)

Ligatura Y (Ligature Y)

Hommage à Ránki György

Virag – Zsigmondy Dénesnek (A flower for Dénes Zsigmondy)

A Very Slow Waltz for Walter Levin

Perpetuum mobile

When Kodály died in 1967, having outlived Bartók by 22 years, the leading Hungarian composer was clearly György Ligeti, but he had left Hungary in 1956. His friend and near-contemporary György Kurtág had decided to stay in Hungary after the Revolution and, in spite of a year in Paris studying with Messiaen and Milhaud, his development had been slower in consequence. The time he spent in Paris in 1957 and 1958 and was crucial, however, since it was there that he discovered Webern, whose music so fascinated him that he made copies of his scores and absorbed an influence on his own work as potent that of Bartók. It took a long time for the authentic personality to emerge but when it did, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it proved to be no less distinctive than Ligeti’s.

The miniaturist awakened in Kurtág by Webern’s example is evident in all but a few of his mature works, most of which are collections of pieces of just a few minutes, or even less than a minute, in length. Signs, Games and Messages, which first appeared as a “work in progress” in 1989,    is characteristic of Kurtág not only in its construction by compilation. His interest in creative recycling is reflected in the fact that many of the items were originally conceived for different instruments in different contexts, like Jelek (Signs) for viola or cello and Játékok (Games) for piano. In their Signs, Games and Messages situation all the pieces are intended for strings: there are solos for violin, viola, cello and double-bass, duets for viola with various instruments, trios, quartets, and a sextet.

Perhaps the most consistently rewarding of the several sets of Signs, Games and Messages is the trios, which were first performed in this country in the then current version by the Leopold String Trio at the Cheltenham Festival in 1996. The first piece in the present selection, Virag az ember, Mijakónak, a tribute to Kurtág’s Japanese pupil Miyako, shares its title and its material with two pieces (one for piano, one for piano duet) in Játékok and is all the more enigmatic here for the use of practice mutes which reduce its modal line (setting the words “We are but flowers” in Kurtág’s The Sayings of Péter Bornemisza) to a mere whisper. Hommage à J.S.B. was originally written for flute piano and double bass in the Bagatelles and also exists in a keyboard version in Játékok. It seems to be an acknowledgement of Bach’s ability to postulate counterpoint with the slenderest of textural means.

Other tributes include one to Kurtág’s late composer colleague György Ránki, a waltz which also occurs in Játekok but is here played pizzicato; one in sighing micro-intervals (again with practice mutes) for the violinist Dénes Zsigmondy in memory of his painist wife Anneliese Nissen-Zsigmondy; and A vey slow waltz for Walter Levin, the dedicatee in this case being first violin of the former LaSalle Quartet. Of the two pieces with musical allusions in the title, Ligatura Y mingles expressive melodic phrases with chant-like textures and percussive Bartók pizzicati, while Perpetuum mobile is a string-trio caricature of a shorter violin solo under the same title elsewhere in Signs, Games and Messages.