Wonderful two and four handed piano accounts of Kurtág's Játékok (Games) and Bach Transcriptions by Kurtág himself and his wife Márta. Their concert appearances together have been described - by Britain's Independent - as "events to be treasured in the musical life of the century...Teasing, caressing and attacking the piano, they literally play games." The thirty fragments from Játékok are brisk splashes of ice-water for the mind, the Bach Transcriptions compellingly beautiful.
"Following last year's 70th birthday tribute to the great Hungarian composer György Kurtág in a recording of his music for string quartet which is currently shortlisted for a Gramophone award, the Munich-based company ECM has added to its highly extensive catalogue a new recording of a selection of the tiny piano 'Games' of Kurtág's Játékok. (...) Here are tiny, tight Knots for the unravelling, a Play with Overtones in which chords beat against their own echo, a sweet Bluebell and an irascible Thistle and a set of Hommages: to Scarlatti, mischievously, to Stravinsky, in a peal of bells, and to a Hungarian folk violinist in the echo of a cimbalom. Márta and György Kurtág's two and four-hand performances of these rare and wonderful crystallisations out of ancient musical bedrock are irresistibly interspersed with the intense and quiet beauty of Kurtág's loving Bach transcriptions. As ever, a unique programme is recorded to perfection and supported by thoughtful and illuminating liner notes." - Hilary Finch, The Times |