Before our much-anticipated performance commemorating 100 years of the esteemed composer, György Kurtág, join us for a special conversation session with ANAM Artistic Director, Paavali Jumppanen.

In 2026, we will be celebrating the centenary of one of the great living composers – György Kurtág. Heard at several ANAM concerts over the years, Kurtág’s music can feel like overhearing a whispered confession, a sudden cry, or a fleeting memory. All condensed into crystalline form.

Kurtág’s artistic language was shaped by the devastation of World War II, his studies in Budapest alongside György Ligeti, and his later encounters with Western modernism in Paris, where he worked with teachers such as Olivier Messiaen and Marianne Stein. These experiences forged a style that, while informed by Bartók and Webern, became unmistakably his own: intimate, uncompromising, and charged with psychological intensity.

“Music fills my everyday life. I still read literature and everything else that interests me, I also compose and teach, but somehow everything always revolves around music.”
– György Kurtág