Works for Soprano [Import]

Adrienne Csengery (Artist), Gyorgy Kurtag (Composer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Composer: Gyorgy Kurtag
• Audio CD (January 11, 2000)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Hungaroton
• ASIN: B0000030A7
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #527,980 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Kurtag cd available; greatest vocal music of our time., December 1, 1999

By 

Karl Henzy - See all my reviews

This review is from: Works for Soprano (Audio CD)

Kurtag's vocal music is sui generis--a thing unto itself. No comparisons are really helpful, and once this music has been heard, it's not to be forgotten. Working with the literature of existential angst (Kafka, Beckett, Dalos) Kurtag "translates" the emotions of the text into the vocal melodies and instrumental passages. All of the orchestra's instruments are used sparingly yet brilliantly. Together, voice and instruments evoke a frightening, lonely, sometimes harrowing world, yet one with moments of supreme clarity about the world's fragile beauty.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fine works, though the programming is far from ideal, October 21, 2006

By 

Christopher Culver - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Works for Soprano (Audio CD)

Gyorgy Kurtag is a modern master of the musical miniature. How short can his pieces get? This 70-minute disc, containing five works with a spotlight on the soprano, is split into sixty-four tracks. The pieces here range from soprano solo to small instrumental accompaniment to music for chamber ensemble. The performers here are among Hungary's virtuosi and all are intimately familiar with Kurtag and his music. Indeed, the composer himself plays piano, the star soprano is Adrienne Csengery, and Andras Keller performs on violin, Ferenc Csontos on double-bass, Marta Fabian on cimbalom. The Budapest Chamber Ensemble conducted by Andras Mihaly appears in one work.

Kurtag's music is difficult to describe, as unlike many 20th-century composers he avoids any single gimmick and instead writes endlessly rich music that puts both the Hungarian musical tradition and avant-garde achievements to the service of the spirit. This powerfully individual voice is heard from the very first two collections of short pieces here, written for soprano and violin. "Fragments of Jozsef Attila" op 20 sets grim Romantic lines of an early 20th-century Hungarian poet, while in "S.K. Remembrance Noise - 7 poems of Dezso Tandori" the text alternates between playfulness and profundity. The writing for violin is astounding, able to over the limited timbre and range one would expect to instead give a whole world of expression.

Probably the best place to start on this disc is "Messages of the Late R.V. Trussova" Op. 17, a setting of twenty-poems of Rimma Dalos for soprano and ensemble. When performed in Paris by the Ensemble Intercontemporain and Csengery conducted by Pierre Boulez in 1981, it finally brought Kurtag fame abroad. It's easy to see why the piece was so instantly likeable. Rimma Dalos, a Russian poet living in Hungary, writes in a tone as charming as a schoolgirl's, but with profound references to a woman's inner self. Kurtag's music accompanies the text perfectly, with the sequence ranging from white-heat to burlesque (in the sequence "A Little Erotic").

"Scenes from a novel" op 19. is another setting of Dalos poems, but for the much simpler ensemble of violin, double bass, and cimbalom. The texts are generally melancholy. Kurtag twice makes reference to other composers, with hommages to Alfred Schnittke, Gustav Mahler, and Laszlo Kalmar. The central instrument accompanying the soprano is cimbalom, which lends a very exotic sheen to the music. Finally, the disc closes with Dalos' poem "Farewell" set for soprano and piano (this strangely lacks an opus number), with the composer himself performing with Csengery.

The liner notes give the text of all the music here, in Russian or Hungarian with English translation. There's also biography of Csengery. One regrets, however, that there's no general context given for these works, that is, at what stage in Kurtag's career they were written and what was going on in Hungary at the time. The English in the booklet also abounds in typos and un- or barely-grammatical constructions.

While the compositions are quite nice, I have a major complaint about the disc: its programming is not sufficiently diverse. Without any other material to fall between the soprano works, these tend to run together. To be able to appreciate Kurtag's little pieces, one has to be able to encounter them on their own, and I find his music best heard to in compilations where other composers are present to break the mood up. Still, the material here is excellent. I discovered Kurtag's work chronologically starting with the String Quartet Op. 1 (get the Arditti performance), but the beauty and grace of pieces like "Trussova" might make this a fine introduction to the composer's work.