Online festival to mark composer Gyorgy Kurtag’s 95th birthday

The events of the festival dubbed Kurtag 95 will be broadcast on the websites of BMC, Zeneakademia and Mupa between February 18 and 21, BMC said.

The programme includes works by Kurtag, Gyorgy Ligeti and Andras Szollosy performed by, among others, the Obudai Danubia Orchestra, the UMZE Chamber Orchestra and the Zeneakademia Contemporary Ensemble.

Featured conductors include Peter Eotvos, Gergely Vajda and Andras Keller. In addition to concerts, a series of fifteen short films made by his granddaughter Judit Kurtag will present the artistic relationship between the composer and his pianist wife, Marta Kurtag.

Coinciding with the festival, BMC Records is releasing a new recording of one of Kurtag’s most important works, The Sayings of Peter Bornemisza.

Kurtag was born in Lugoj (Lugos), in western Romania, in 1926, and his international breakthrough came in 1981 when Pierre Boulez commissioned a work by him for the Ensemble InterContemporain.