The Guardian, (Andrew Clements), February 17, 2006
(5 stars) Banse and Keller show Kafka Fragments to be a quiet masterpiece of richness and emotional power...a wonderful CD.
Album Description
To mark Gyorgy Kurtag's 80th birthday ECM releases its fifth full album of music by the celebrated Hungarian composer. One of his most personal, and longest, works to date - an austerely beautiful cycle for soprano and violin. Lasting an hour, Kafka-Fragmente, Op 24, a vocal cycle written within a comparatively short time in 1985/86, is Kurtag's most extensive score to date. Characteristically for this master of aphoristic concentration, it comprises 40 short movements, some of them less than half a minute long. As a whole they form a mosaic of existential quality. Kurtag selected the short texts from Kafka's private writings, diaries and letters, without attempting to form a coherent narrative. He seems to have been attracted especially by very personal, seemingly enigmatic fragments. Nevertheless, there is a prevailing metaphor, a search for the "true path".
Kurtag and Kafka are connected by a natural affinity: they are both rooted in the central European Jewish tradition sharing a sense of economy and reduction in their work and an attitude of radical self-criticism and humility towards art. Kurtag started composing the pieces for soprano and violin, initially planning to enlarge the instrumentation. Only later did he realise that the two parts in the same high register, mirroring and commenting each other, offer an austere beauty and concentration completely in tune with Kafka's distressing messages. The music makes extreme technical and expressive demands on both players.
Recorded 2005
Personnel:
Juliane Banse - (soprano), Andras Keller - (violin)
About the Artist
The Hungarian Gyorgy Kurtag is one of the most respected masters of contemporary composition uniting tastes and schools, the legitimate heir of Bartok and Webern. With the composer's supervision, ECM has recorded his music since 1992, resulting in several award-winning albums. They include the Keller Quartet's 'Musik fur Streichinstrumente', 'Jatekok' with the composer and his wife performing piano duets; and 'Signs, Games and Messages'.
Hungarian violinist Andras Keller is a long-time Kurtag disciple who premiered the Kafka Fragments in 1987 with Adrienne Csengery. As leader of the Keller Quartet, he can be heard on ECM in music by Bach, Kurtag, Schnittke and Shostakovich, and on Bartok's 44 Duos for two violins.
Distinguished German soprano Juliane Banse has previously recorded Heinz Holliger's opera 'Schneewittchen' and songs by Debussy and Mozart for ECM.
