Programs

Thirty years ago, the Budapest Music Center’s activities began with the founding of the Hungarian Music Information Center and Library – and it is here that our half-day series of events organized to mark this anniversary begins. The program features works by two contemporary Hungarian composers that do not require a performer to be played. One of the best-known pieces in this unconventional genre is Poème symphonique, composed for one hundred metronomes started simultaneously but at different speeds. The Etudes for MIDI piano use machine-controlled traditional piano sounds to realize compositional ideas that the physics of the human body would not allow. Artikulation brings to life the electronic musical interpretation of human speech articulation on magnetic tape, while Autokoncert is one of the most startling audiovisual works in Hungarian music history, in which the instruments are not played but are left to their own devices. Composer Marcell Dargay will guide the audience through the program in Hungarian.

The kurtag.hu website is both an information site and a database, which may prove just as fascinating to the general public with an interest in the art of György Kurtág as it is to performers who play his music or to students who are only just becoming acquainted with it. It contains not only a detailed biography of the composer, a catalogue of his works, a discography, his writings and interviews, and a bibliography of books and studies related to his oeuvre, but also the previously unknown family history of the Kurtág family, numerous public and private photographs, as well as a wealth of valuable sources documenting Kurtág’s teaching activities: memoirs and videos. The website will feature a list of concerts at which Kurtág’s works are performed, as well as video recordings of numerous events (concerts and conference presentations) that took place in Budapest as part of the Kurtág100 festival. The website was created with the generous support of Olivia Carino, in the collaboration of the Music Forum Foundation, the Bard College and the Budapest Music Center, under the expert guidance of music historian Gergely Fazekas; collaborating partners include Editio Musica Budapest and the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel. The bilingual (English-Hungarian) website will be available to everyone from 1 October. The website will be presented by Gergely Fazekas, with contributions from Béla Mihalik, the historian who compiled the family history, as well as pianists Gábor Csalog and András Kemenes, and cimbalom player András Szalai. The language of this event is Hungarian. Photo: István Huszti / BMC