Kurtag / Komsi / Oramo - Kafka Fragments - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Composed by John Cage between 1946 and 1948, InchSonatas and InterludesInch for prepared piano is one of the most famous works of the composer and one of the works most admired by listeners and performers alike, holding a key position in his catalogue of works.Several years earlier, Cage had already developed the technique of piano preparation to explore the possibilities of sound manipulation Preparation tables preceding each of his pieces indicate which materials (e.g. screws, bolts, rubber, felt or plastic elements) have to be used and where they have to be placed between the piano strings. Each object, it's size, strength, fixing method and position changes the pitch, volume, timbre and duration of the original piano sound.In comparison with Cage's earlier pieces, the preparation tables for the InchSonatas and InterludesInch are comprehensive and accurate. The preparation, which takes the pianist from two and a half to three hours, encompasses more than half of all the strings of the piano. At first, Cage thus tried to achieve a specified sound image - an ideal which he later modified InchWhen I first placed objects between piano strings, it was with the desire to possess sounds (to be able to repeat them). But, as the music left my home and went from piano to piano and from pianist to pianist, it became clear that not only are two pianists essentially different from one another, but two pianos are not the same either all led me to the enjoyment of things as they come, as they happen, rather than as they are possessed or kept or forced to be.Inch

GRAMMY® Award-winning American soprano Susan Narucki is one of today's most committed advocates of the music of our time. Her deep and lasting working relationship with Gyo¨rgy Kurta´g dates to 1986, the year the Hungarian composer penned his iconoclastic chamber work Kafka Fragments. Susan instinctively imbues the work with the widely varied moods of anguish, longing and rage alongside humour, absurdity and ecstasy that the texts convey.Arranged over four sections, Kurta´g sets 40 extracts from the diaries and letters of the mercurial novelist Franz Kafka. Despite being his largest song-cycle, Kurta´g deploys his signature miniature style many of the movements last less than a minute long.Joining Susan is one of today's foremost interpreters of contemporary classical music, violinist Curtis Macomber. Together they prove to be the perfect proponents of Kurta´g's idiosyncratic fusion of poetry and music.

Gyorgy Kurtag, 93, ranks among the great living composers of classical modernism. Consistently shortening and accentuating his works, he perfected his aphoristic style, producing concise miniatures. This new album is dedicated to previously unreleased works by Kurtag, presenting for the first time twenty-two movements after Georg Christoph Lichtenberg's Sudelbucher, scored for soprano and double bass a real discovery of aphorisms. Also based on literary models are his Scenes from a Novel, Op. 19, after fifteen poems by Rimma Dalos (soprano, violin, cimbalom, double bass). The Seven Songs, Op. 22 (soprano, cimbalom) and In Memory of a Winter Evening, Op. 8 (soprano, violin, cimbalom), appear for the first time on album. This thoughtfully compiled collection shows the Hungarian master as one of the most individual artistic voices of our time. The four internationally renowned soloists, here in the original and charming formation of soprano, violin, cimbalom and double bass, interpret some of the most densely wrought pieces by Gyorgy Kurtag.