Kurtág György: Kafka-Fragments, Op. 24 | Festival d’Aix-en-Provence 2024

6.-14. July 2024.
Théâtre du Jeu de Paume
13100 Aix-en-Provence, 21 Rue de l'Opéra
France

The very essence of performance in a pair of major works of contemporary music theatre. A man, a woman: the complete possible gamut of vocal expression, an infinite collection of emotional states, changing all the time. Around them, a small ensemble forced to its expressive limits as it rushes in a flash through the history of music; a violin driven to the utmost excess, out of tune or broken. Eight Songs for a Mad King (Peter Maxwell Davis, 1969) deals with the insanity of King George III of England, who wanted to learn to sing to his birds, and evokes a powerful empathy with the ‘mad’ – those ventriloquists of shared traumas. The Kafka-Fragments, Op. 24 (György Kurtág, 1987) are a succession of forty miniatures, being as many physical and metaphysical variations on walking – determined, wayward or constrained – expressing Kafka’s existential anxiety in an instant and with exquisite nuance. Barrie Kosky’s approach is intense and pared-down, entirely at the service of first-class interpreters and an unsparing reading of these extreme works.

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