György Kurtag s/d

Not just search and destroy, actually: I'd like to learn a little more about how his reputation and discography have developed over the past twenty years or so if there are any experts in the house.

The reason I'm asking is that I once read an interesting article on Kurtag in the mid-90s by Ian MacDonald ('The People's Music', 'Revolution in the Head'), casting him as a widely-unheard, unfairly-ignored figure. This seems pretty far from the case now - can't help wondering what MacDonald's touchstone records would have been at the time and which are the pick of the ECM crop that has apparently emerged in the interim.

Turns out the article was on Giya Kancheli! *bangs head on monitor*

I clearly need guidance on both!

kurtag's reputation also developed relatively late i think, at least outside of central europe

i wish i had gone to see him and his wife playing excerpts from jatekok and the bach transcriptions a few years ago

otherwise i like the orchestral works i have heard (stele, the miniaturist piano concerto quasi una fantasia) and the quartet music

Kafka Fragments.

Love to see Játékok performed one day.

These are my favorite Kurtag works, in current order of affection. But there's a lot of Kurtag I haven't got my head round yet. Composers like he and Webern who express themselves hyper-economically are among the most challenging for me to connect with-- but I've had much greater mileage out of Kurtag than Webern.

Kafka Fragments
Messages of the Late Miss R.V. Troussova (saw this performed live: revelatory)
Jatekok and Bach Transcriptions (basically all the stuff on the ECM piano disc)
Hommage a R. Schumann
Splinters

I had never heard of him before the ECM disc of string quartets came out. Starting around then he began to be written about more and more every year.

Thanks for these recs. Jatekok I have a copy of... Greatly enjoy the Bach transcriptions. The rest has yet to grow on me.

The others I will acquire from the library.

Would love people to talk Kancheli too... Listening to his Lament CD on ECM now and easily finding the mental space for it.

I no know Kan-che-li

iirc ilxor Turangalila is very fond of kancheli

Schonberg Ensemble did a cd with 'Grabstein for Stephan' on it: http://www.askoschoenberg.nl/?page=cd_dvd