Games and Improvisations: Hommage A Gyorgy Kurtag

Quantity:   

A new "pianoicon" – this is how Fred Frith describes Katharina Weber. For almost thirty years now the classically trained pianist and composer moves within the world of New Music and Improvisation.

On this second CD on Intakt Records Katharina Weber finds a new path. She interprets eleven short piano pieces by György Kurtág of his collection Játékok. The trio Katharina Weber - Barry Guy - Balts Nils develops these short piano solo jewels with improvisations.

Kurtág says he wants to express the maximum with a minimum of notes. Katharina Weber: "The pieces contain a great mass of substance, so to speak. Like throwing a stone into the water, Kurtág's pieces extend in wide circles when they're thrown into the flow of improvising fantasy. Our improvisations are a kind of counter movement to the preceding concretion, an unfolding within the course of time, a further developing of threads collectively, resulting from the piece, often moving away from the piece, as well, in the same way as the waves ripple out from the point of the stone's impact, because free improvisation simply cannot be tied down."

1. Bluebell (Kurtág) 0 : 31

2. Improvisation I (Weber-Guy-Nill) 3 : 22

3. Falling Asleep (Kurtág) 0 : 35

4. Improvisation II (Weber-Guy-Nill) 4 : 59

5. (Thus It Happened ... ) (Kurtág) 1 : 19

6. Improvisation III (Weber-Guy-Nill) 3 : 44

7. Palm Stroke (Kurtág) 0 : 17

8. Improvisation IV (Weber-Guy) 1 : 52

9. Hommage à Szervánszky: Silence (Kurtág) 0 : 40

10. Improvisation V (Weber-Guy-Nill) 4 : 26

11. Play with Infinity (Kurtág) 0 : 41

12. Improvisation VI (Weber-Guy-Nill) 6 : 37

13. Play with Infinity (Kurtág) 0 : 49

14. Dialog for the 70th Birthday of András Mihály (Kurtág) 1 : 13

(Or: How Can One Answer to the Same 4 Sounds with Only 3)

15. Improvisation VII (Weber-Guy-Nill) 5 : 05

16. Stubbunny (Kurtág) 0 : 48

17. Improvisation VIII (Guy-Nill) 2 : 24

18. For Georg Kröll's Birthday (Kurtág) 1 : 10

19. Improvisation IX (Weber-Guy-Nill) 5 : 28

20. … Waiting for Susan … (Kurtág) 1 : 06