Celebrating György Kurtág

The Hungarian composer György Kurtág turns 100 today, with artists including Steven Isserlis, Benjamin Appl and Víkingur Ólafsson all assembled in Budapest to celebrate the occasion with a series of recitals, lectures, roundtable discussions and the premiere screening of a new documentary by film-maker Dénes Nagy. Tomorrow evening sees the premiere of Kurtág's long-awaited one-act opera Die Stechardin (dedicated to the memory of his wife Márta, who died in 2019).

In the run-up to this milestone birthday, some of the artists who have become closely associated with Kurtág over the decades were kind enough to share stories with us about the remarkable impact which the man and his music have had on their lives...

Benjamin Appl

'György Kurtág is turning one hundred, and I find it difficult to write about him without also writing about myself. My encounter with him has marked me deeply, both as a musician and as a person. When I first met him in Budapest almost seven years ago, I sensed immediately that he was not concerned with results, but with truth. We would spend hours - sometimes entire days - on just a few bars of music, listening, doubting, searching, with a quiet intensity that feels increasingly rare.

Kurtág is constantly asking questions: about a note, a word, a breath, a state of being. For him, even a single staccato dot can carry enormous weight. Often he would simply say, ‘I don’t know.’ And in that moment, something opens. His doubt is not weakness, but courage. Working with him has taught me to remain vulnerable, to keep listening, and to resist easy answers.

In a musical world that is always in a hurry, Kurtág feels like a place of stillness. He reminds me why I began making music in the first place: to understand myself a little better, to feel more deeply, and to share something honest. For that gift, I will always be grateful.'

Jean-Guihen Queyras

'The art of interpretation in a nutshell, as learned from G. Kurtág:

In the 1990s, I was given the invaluable gift of working intensively one-on-one with György Kurtág in preparation for my recording of some of his recently composed solo pieces. Not only were these long sessions of intense work immensely inspiring; Kurtág also gave me a life lesson on what the essence of being a performer is.

We were in the midst of an intense exchange on how to play a certain phrase, and as I was repeatedly trying to bring into my playing all of his extremely demanding and detailed wishes, he paused for a moment and said: “See, now you played exactly as I asked you to, but YOU were not present.”

These words have accompanied me ever since when searching for my ideal rendering of a piece, be it from a composer of our times or of the past alike: enter as deep as you can in the composer’s universe, gather all informations available, but do it while being fully present with your heart and all that makes you who you are, your values, your desires, your hopes, your joy…'

Quatuor Arod

'We had the great privilege of meeting György Kurtág in Budapest during the filming of our documentary directed by Bruno Monsaingeon. Over two intense days of masterclasses, he shared his insight into the Microludes from his own composition as well as Bartók’s Third String Quartet. Receiving guidance from someone who has lived through and actively shaped the history of music was profoundly inspiring for us.

What struck us first was his vibrant passion and the extraordinary energy he conveyed, urging us to inhabit every millimetre of each sound we produced, always in service of the music and its deepest truth. He also led us into a deeper understanding of his compositional process, as well as Bartók’s treatment of folk influences and the legacy of Beethoven’s quartets.

He reminded us that music is alive and constantly evolving, even dared to adjust the pitch of the first violin part in his piece by one octave. This encounter continues to shape our musical approach today.'

Susan Narucki

'György Kurtág's music has been a touchstone for me and for many musicians whom I have known for decades.  His compositional language is singular; it lives on the knife's edge, with outbursts of almost unbearable intensity contrasting with silence and restraint. In some ways, Kurtág's music defies characterization - it has a strong sense of formal structure but is expressed within a unique system of musical notation based on asymmetry and spontaneity. Within his music, there is humor, delicacy, sublime beauty, all framed within an extraordinary, uncompromising imagination.   

As a vocalist, I have lost myself in Kurtág's settings of texts by Franz Kafka, Rimma Dalos, Attila József, and many others. There is a fusion between music, text, and expression that compels the performer to embrace immediacy, bringing the moment of making music into the sharp focus of reality. In those moments, among wonderful colleagues who willingly undertake this journey, time is suspended and for a few moments, we reside in the world of this extraordinary composer's vision. It is a place I will never grow tired of exploring.'

Shani Diluka

'Working with György Kurtág was a foundational experience for me. Through his work, I understood that his music involves much more than execution: it is a quest, that of the invisible and the right gesture. This gesture repeated ad infinitum at his request, almost utopian, already constitutes an overcoming in itself. In the inconceivable remains its mystery and its depth.

His language, although resolutely contemporary, is nourished by this invisible filiation: a music of fragments and memory, where each sound carries an almost spiritual density. He can refer to Beckett or Tarkovsky, for example.

Kurtág's music also seems to draw on the deepest roots of the tradition — Bach, Schumann, Brahms — while projecting itself into the future. During his master classes on these works, he revealed with a rare intensity the soul of each composer. Kurtág never separated the work from its emotional core; he tirelessly seeks that point of truth where the form meets the soul.

I also have a very emotional memory of the presence of Márta, his wife, during his classes. Discreet but essential, she listened with extreme attention, encouraged him, and often whispered a few words in his ear. This presence formed a silent, almost sacred duo. An essential composer, Kurtág is a go-between between the past and the future, in search of the invisible and its deepest vibration.'

Benjamin Hochman

'I first experienced the composer György Kurtág’s teaching in 1996, when I attended a masterclass that he taught at the Jerusalem Music Center. Together with his wife, Márta, he worked with young musicians on his own music as well as music by Beethoven. At the time, I was 16, he was 70.

I remember him working on the first three notes of the Beethoven Cello Sonata Op. 69 for what seemed to me like an eternity. I understood that he was searching intensely for something, striving to extract from the music an essential truth, or rather reveal it, for himself as well as for the young musicians. At the time, what exactly that essence might be, was light years beyond my comprehension. Yet I could feel that this was far from nonsense. Although I couldn’t understand the nuances, the quest itself made a profound impression on me.

In 2010, I heard Mr. and Mrs. Kurtág teach at Carnegie Hall. They worked in a masterclass setting with a few string quartets in the early stages of their careers. This time, it was Mr. Kurtág’s work on the slow movement of the Beethoven String Quartet Op. 59, No. 2, that stayed with me. There was a reverence in his approach to this music but vitality as well, approaching each note as part of a musical language. Elements like tone color or phrasing were never prioritized over the musical language itself.

In the fall of 2025, I played for Mr. Kurtág (his wife had passed away). It was the third time I had worked with him since 2021. We worked on several Játékok (Games), his short piano pieces, as well as Bach and Beethoven At the time, I was 45, he was 99. We spent a long time working on the coda of the tragic slow movement of Beethoven Piano Sonata Op.10, No. 3. I could feel that this music was of the utmost importance to him. It could have been the first time he encountered this music or the thousandth time. The total commitment of his approach would have been the same.

The fact that he sometimes allowed me to play more than three notes at a time, that we could zoom in and out of the musical text together, meant a lot to me. It felt like a mutual dance of searching and sometimes even finding. All it took was the hint of a sour face from him for me to know that I had pained him by not doing justice to the music, not even playing it with a semblance of genuine understanding.

At 100, his antennae are very sharp, so fine-tuned that he picks up on the slightest hint of wavering attention. There is something of the guru in him, but his quest is without artifice. He is still searching, and so are we.'