“Reducing music to its intense essentials, Mr. Kurtág cultivated a style of precisely controlled intensity.”
– The New York Times

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

Béla BARTÓK Rhapsody No. 1 for violin and piano 
György LIGETI Étude No. 1: i. Désordre, vi. Automne à Varsovie  
György KURTÁG Hommage a R. Sch.: Six moments musicaux, op. 15d
Robert SCHUMANN Adagio and Allegro, op. 70 
KURTÁG Six Pieces for trombone and piano 
KURTÁG Six Moments Musicaux, op. 44