György Kurtág

Hungarian composer, musician, and educator, he studied with composers Olivier Messiaen and Darius Milhaud. He taught at the Liszt Academy from 1967 to 1993. His international reputation began to take hold with Messages of the Late Miss R.V. Troussova for soprano and chamber ensemble, which had its 1981 premiere in Paris. He forged an international reputation for deeply expressive music, often the musical equivalent of diary entries and personal messages. He favors groups of compact, gestural miniatures, exploring composer/performer and performer/ audience interfaces, including improvisatory and spatial elements. For more than 40 years, with his wife, Marta, he performed his Jatekok (Games), an ever-expanding set of pieces serving as a laboratory in which he has conducted experiments in the search for musical truth. He served as a composer-in-residence with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Konzerthaus and worked with other organizations in the Netherlands and France.