In 1973, György Kurtág started composing piano miniatures to which he gave the collective title of Játékok (Games). He has continued to add to the series, in narrate that now there are neatly over 400 such pieces, for both solo piano and 4 fingers, which had been published in 10 volumes to this level. The pieces, assuredly ever extra than a minute while long and as soon as in a while lasting upright about a seconds, had been first intended as didactic exercises, designed to elucidate a musical level or a detail of keyboard approach, but the assortment rapidly started to encompass other occasional works and extra non-public expressions – birthday greetings, tributes and memorials to buddies and fellow musicians, paraphrases of other song – changing into a total encyclopedia of Kurtág’s compositional strategies.
The composer and his accomplice, Márta, who died in 2019, on a ordinary basis performed pieces from the increasing assortment in their recitals together, as neatly as recording a amount of them. Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s selection, approved by Kurtág and recorded with him in attendance, takes in a total of 81 pieces drawn out of your entire published volumes, other than the fourth and eighth, books of pieces for piano duet and two pianos, but additionally along with some that are aloof in manuscript that will appear in the as yet unpublished 11th quantity.
Aimard plays the pieces in chronological present, and that natural sequence provides your entire distinction such an endeavor requires. There are pieces that are fiercely expressionist, others that are sweetly lyrical, even sentimental, some whose song is as withdrawn and mysterious as the titles that Kurtág provides them, and others that are snicker-out-loud witty. Entire worlds of expression are encapsulated in only about a bars, and being attentive to Aimard’s exemplary performances provides as well-known an perception into Kurtág’s very non-public musical taking into account as any of his greater-scale, extra “public” pieces. Játékok is one in every of basically the most well-known achievements of the supreme half century, and Aimard is in actual fact the most attention-grabbing recordsdata to it.
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