Friday, August 12, 2022

Kurtág’s Miniaturist Approach to Kafka Texts

courtesy of PIAS

One week from today harmonia mundi will release a recording of György Kurtág’s Opus 24 Kafka-Fragmente. Scored for soprano voice (Anna Prohaska) and solo violin (Isabelle Faust), this composition basically feeds the concept of a song cycle to the meat-grinder of minimalism. The work consists of 40 movements partitioned into four parts. The shortest of these is only thirteen seconds in duration; the longest is a few seconds short of seven minutes. As is usually the case, Amazon.com is currently processing pre-orders for this new album.

I first learned about Kurtág in 2007, back when I was still working and living in Palo Alto. Thanks to San Francisco Performances (SFP), my wife and I attended a piano recital by Marino Formenti, which took place at the De Young Museum. Both the title and the content of the program were taken from a solo album that Formenti had released entitled Kurtág’s Ghosts. The track listing for this album, including track durations, can be found on an Amazon Web page. However, there was no substitute for the immediacy of a recital performance, and this one left me hooked on “all things Kurtág.”

I also have SFP to thank for introducing me to Isabelle Faust, whom I was fortunate enough to meet at a donor reception a couple of years ago. Prohaska, on the other hand, I knew only from her Deutsche Grammophon debut album, Enchanted Forest, which I had discussed on my Examiner.com site in March of 2013. On the basis of those experiences, I was not prepared for either of them venturing onto the turf that had been introduced to me by Formenti; but I definitely wanted to check out what they would do on that turf!

Sadly, harmonia mundi was a bit vague in accounting for the recording sessions for this album. The booklet states only that those sessions took place in May of 2020. Whether this was a “one shot” session, recorded from beginning to end after the performers had prepared themselves with rehearsals, or an extended series of sessions allowing for each track to be allotted as much or as little time was necessary to provide a satisfactory account was not explicitly stated in the production information. I would definitely have preferred the former option.

There tends to be an undercurrent of spontaneity in each of the Kafka texts, at least those taken from his diaries and posthumously published letters. Excerpts from the stories were probably less spontaneous. Nevertheless, a general rhetoric of spontaneity pervades Faust’s violin work, as well as Prohaska’s deliveries of the texts. On the other hand so many of those texts, however brief, slam the reader with what can only be called (if the abbreviation will be forgiven) “WTF reactions.” As a result, those listening to this recording may be inclined to hit the Pause button after at least some of these songs to allow mind to catch up with some of Kafka’s convolutions.

Indeed, this is music that puts attentive listening to a serious test. The entire album is slightly shy of an hour in duration. Nevertheless, Kurtág’s focus on even the shortest of his text settings is so intense that one may have to worry about listening fatigue. It is thus more than a little helpful that both the track listing and the libretto make note of the divisions that separate the four parts of the overall structure. I suspect that Kurtág anticipated that the most attentive listeners would deserve a break from time to time. The album may not have allotted sufficient time for those breaks, but the serious listener would do well to make judicious use of that Pause button!

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