The Edge of Silence: Works for Voice by György Kurtág

Albumbeschreibung

In the history of music, György Kurtág is a figure apart. Born in Hungary in 1926, he stood aside from the great ideological movements of his time and created his own personal language in solitude, thinking of music as he put it, "as an ongoing search". But while doggedly independent, he was also a man of culture whose language developed in the shadow of two great teachers: Bartók and Beethoven, the former following on largely from the latter. A champion of the small form, Kurtág also drew inspiration (when he wasn't revisiting them explicitly) from Bach, Schubert and Schumann.

Susan Narucki, the soloist on this album, has given an insightful discretion of the contents of the programme: Troussova for soprano and large instrumental ensemble is the first of Kurtág's works to win him an international audience; he finished Scenes from a novel a few years later. These pieces both use words from the Russian poet Rimma Dalos. On the surface, the stories they tell are similar: tales of unhappy love. But in some respects, Scenes from a novel is the more bitter of the two. The lover's ecstasy is short-lived, and the protagonists' uncertainty and frustration become ever more palpable as their relationship becomes more precarious.

In Troussova, it is implied that the protagonist is ending their life; the protagonist of Scenes from a novel endures and resists – while less dramatic, this message is more poignant and corrosive. Sound-memory for soprano and violin is a musical setting of short poems by Dezső Tandori.

In memory of a Winter’s night, based on verse by Hungarian poet Pál Gulyás, is a youthful work that calls on the cimbalom – that iconic instrument of Hungarian folk tradition – and sets it alongside violin and human voice. By the time of the Seven Songs, Op. 22, Kurtág's writing for the cimbalom was completely integrated into his mature style; in these six short pieces based on poems by Amy Károlyi and Issa Kobayashi, the vocal line and the cimbalom come together to shed greater light on the words, which are by turns enchanting, passionate and evanescent. © François Hudry/Qobuz