On February 19th, György Kurtág’s 98th birthday, the Budapest Music Center, the city’s most prominent domain of contemporary music and musicians, offered a concert to celebrate the great master’s birthday and his ever-expanding musical output.
The program was a three-part pastiche of new and old: a bravura violin solo written for Hiromi Kikuchi who performed it, the dynamic duo of cimbalomist Miklós Lukács and woodwind player Balázs Szokolay Dongó, and the Zvoane Banatene Academic Group of Traditional Music from Romania.
The program choices were a curious mix that nostalgically commemorated Hungary’s longest living composer who has ties to the glorious days of Bartók and Kodaly. As a whole, the experience that evening was a reverse journey from the present and back to the historical folk music sources that have fundamentally influenced Kurtág’s oevre.
After a brief greeting from BMC owner Laszló Göz who voiced tributes to Kurtág (in attendance) and read aloud a birthday wish from composer/conductor Péter Eötvös, violinist Kikuchi skillfully executed an extraordinary score (physically spread out on 11 music stands). It was dedicated to her with the title: Hirominak — Hipartita Opus 43, and written between 2000-2004. Its eight sections included hommages to such personages as Heraclitus, Rimbaud, Anne Longuet-Marx, György Gonda, and Eötvös. The audience, a large collection of knowledgeable fans of contemporary music – particularly Kurtág’s – applauded the composer and performer with relish and appreciation.
The second act of Lukács and Dongó was comprised of their own terrific, semi-improvised, stream-of-consciousness treatment of Bartók’s famous Romanian Dances suite, as well as historical melodies from the Carpathian Basin. Dongó’s expertise on three different wooden flutes and soprano sax, alongside Lukács’ ineffable mastery on the cimbalom, was sheer delight. Their energy sparked continuously, in new and unexpected ways that engineered the old into a modern magical alchemy.
The 9-member Zvoane Banatene group (led by Lucian Emil Roşca), a known ensemble in the academic field as purveyors of the folk music sources in this region, performed as the third act. Alas, there was little alchemy. Nor energy; they lacked the kind of escalating momentum that a program needs to capture an audience’s devotion. Also plagued with inadequate miking of the two singers, their long set became homogenized, repetitious, and minimally captivating to a sophisticated audience.
However, I hope the ensemble’s gift provided Maestro Kurtág with enough source material as his birthday present. The most gratifying present for all of us was the amazing presence of Kurtág at the concert (and at his champagne reception), his unique music, and the brilliance of Lukács and Dongó.