How a composer mourns his wife

How a composer mourns his wife

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norman lebrecht

October 19, 2020

The great Hungarian composer György Kurtág plays a Mozart adagio in memory of his beloved wife Marta, who died a year ago this weekend.

Kurtág is 94.

This is the picture of them in October 2018 at the same piano, playing four-hand.

 

Comments

  • Peter San Diego says:

    One of my fondest musical memories is of a concert in the Liszt Academy great hall, celebrating Ligeti’s 80th birthday (if I recall the number correctly), at which Marta and Gyorgy Kurtag performed some of the Jatekok (Games) and Bach transcriptions. One of the Games was immensely touching: the two played a simple melody, one pitch at a time, but where each had to reach across, or around in back of, the other for a key, or loop their arm over or under the other’s; their coordinated, slow reaching and swaying was the loveliest dancelike depiction of marital mutuality and concord.

  • Micaela Bonetti says:

    Touching.
    (And played with exquisite sensibility!)

  • Ed says:

    Very moving.

  • Bruce says:

    “Marts”?

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