GIYA KANCHELI Nach dem Weinem
Born in 1935 and died on 2 October 2019, the Georgian composer Giya Kancheli’s harrowing solo for cello dates from 1994. Mstislav Rostropovich, who frequently put his instrument at the disposal of his old friend, wrote this about Kancheli. “I love this composer for his independence. Olivier Messiaen revealed for me the limitlessness and endlessness of time, and the same is true for Kancheli.” At the very end of the work filled with heartrending outbursts, a human voice sounds.
LÁSZLÓ VIDOVSZKY Film break – In memoriam János Tóth – world première
LászlóVidovszky’sFilm Break – In memoriam JánosTóth was created in tribute to the cinematographer and director who died last year at the age of 88, “... to whom I can thank for the happiest moments of my film work. Of all the famous filmmakers I know, his temperament, work morale, eccentricities and world view stood perhaps most closely to all that we call art… His father was a bargee on the Danube, who observed the world beyond the river bank from the boat through a telescope. Even in his youth he screened films in the local cinema,” writes László Vidovszky. The composition is a remix of the last movement of the work MOZI from 1993. In the original recording, Endre Koréh sings the tune Murmurs of Forest, Murmurs of Reeds.
GÁBOR CSALOG Five pieces of Funeral Music - world première
The chamber version of the GáborCsalog composition was made about 18 months ago, and the grand orchestral version a year ago. The opening movement Overture is slightly in the way of Mahler. The tonality is dominated by the bright light of the three horns right up until the appearance of the ‘frozen’, numbed chorale. Little Magyar Mourning (No. 2) does not contain quotations, its Hungarian voice emerges from the “collective unconscious”. The Appassionato (No. 3) is built on the opposition of two types of musical material. One derives from a Schumann Novellette, yet is virtually unrecognizable because its gesture is changed. The other is a chorale. Polyphone tunnel (No. 4) is structured from the C-sharp minor fugue of volume 1 of the Well-Tempered Clavier, and “may contain traces of the B-A-C-H motif”. In addition to the specific Bach patterns, the fugues of Shostakovich and the second movement of the Stravinsky Symphony of Psalms may also have had an impact on his archaic style. According to the composer’s own admission, “the work appeared like slow tunnelling: every day it progressed a few more centimetres, and in the meantime I had no idea where it was going and whether it would ever come out somewhere. It never actually ended because its essence is unfinishable”. No. 5 Steps – in the footsteps of Ives does not contain a specific Ives quotation, it is just that the way of setting up two types of musical material against each other is reminiscent of the American composer. The rising sequences of this movement break the sky, are a little scary and cosmic. Perhaps subconsciously, the Infinite Column, a piano etude of Ligeti, also had an influence on them. However, the lines, constantly striving to rise, repeatedly find themselves blocked by an ‘angelic’ chorale. At the end of the work, this chorale is fulfilled. Gábor Csalog dedicated his work to the memory of Márta Kurtág.
SCHUBERT String Quartet in D minor (‘Death and the Maiden’), D. 810 – First movement: Allegro
Unusually for Schubert, all four movements of the quartet composed in 1824 are in the minor key. The string quartet takes its nickname from the second movement, which is a reworking of a Schubert song from 1817. Death that does not even spare youth has been a popular theme of painting since the Renaissance. The remarkably simple harmonies of the Schubert song are revived in a variation movement in the quartet. The germ of an idea sown in the song takes an astonishing path in the variation series from lyrical adornment through inner dramas to the final stillness.
SCHUBERT String Quintet in C major, D. 956, Second movement: Adagio
The C major quintet was Schubert’s last completed instrumental work, about which he informed his music publishers, Probst of Leipzig, on 2 October 1828. Just six weeks later, the composer was dead. The slow movement of what is one of music’s greatest chamber pieces is sublimely imaginative dream music by Schubert. It is in 12/8 time: mothers lull their children to this rhythm; this is the meter of night scenes and the most intimate love duets of opera. The key of E major is just as unrealistically distant from the foundation key of C major of the entire composition as from the F minor of the middle part. Never before had improbable happiness and brutal reality clashed so violently as in this movement. Both Arthur Rubinstein and Thomas Mann expressed their desire that they would like to pass away while listening to this music.
In memory of MÁRTA KURTÁG
GYÖRGY KURTÁG Signs, Games and Messages for string trio - excerpts
Uxori optimae – Márta Kurtág
György Kurtág’s twin works for piano entitled ...Egyptian Couple on the Way to the Unknown... was heard for the first time at the BMC Kurtág 90 festival. The work was inspired by a wooden statue dated to 2350-2200 B.C. that is displayed in the Louvre. Let’s view this prehistoric masterpiece of carving showing a couple side by side, made during the 6th dynasty of the Old Kingdom. They are walking together. Time has not left them untouched. Both of the man’s feet have worn away (it does happen once a person gets to be 4300 years old). The woman’s right arm and shin are missing altogether. She has her other arm around her husband’s waist, yet the man also draws confidence from her. Their gazes are fixed on the unknown future: they show surprise, perhaps wonder, but not fear. They will continue on their path to the very end; slowly, but without hesitation. Whatever they face, they have each other. The very existence of the statue is a miracle in itself because it is carved not from durable stone but far more fragile wood. This is the only such statue to have survived from Egypt’s Old Kingdom. Detailed examination has found that the pair are carved from a single piece of acacia. For me, this Egyptian couple worked from one piece of wood are none other than György Kurtág and Márta Kurtág.
Anyone who ever saw the four-handed concerts of the Kurtág couple, when they were playing the pieces of the Games series and Bach arrangements, can say that they witnessed an inconceivable level of human and artistic affinity. The perfect harmony and unity of two people.
BEETHOVEN String Quartet in F major, Op. 135. Third movement: Lento assai, cantante e tranquillo
The slow movement of Beethoven’s quartet is the last composition he completed. Its D-flat major theme is the pouring of purified, white-hot love into the cast of music, and its C-sharp minor theme is the anxious turning towards the unknown. Béla Hamvas writes the following in Melancholy of Late Works: “But what happens when man reaches such a place of existence where nobody was before? What happens when a person enters the place it is forbidden to enter? They say this is death. White darkness. He lives right next to it. In fact, so close that he can see across, like to the neighbour. […] In the life of man, the penultimate drop of honey is joy over female beauty. The final drop is melancholy. The soundless and painful delight over the meaningless and incomprehensible passing of life. This is the last drop of honey. This is the sultry sweetness on the threshold of white darkness.”
