GYÖRGY KURTÁG (b.1926): ...concertante... for Violin, Viola and Orchestra, Op. 42 (Hiromi Kikuchi [violin], Ken Hakii [viola], Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra; Zoltán Kocsis), Hipartita for Solo Violin, Op. 43 (Kikuchi), KURTÁG/GYÖRGY KURTÁG JR.: Zwiegesprach for String Quartet and Synthesizer (Keller Quartet, Kurtág Jr. [synthesizer]), 19 excerpts from Játékok and Bach transcriptions (Márta and György Kurtág [upright piano with supersordino]).

Description: These recordings come from an 80th-birthday celebration for Kurtág in Budapest and Vienna in 2006. The composer's son, who collaborated with him on the jointly composed Zweigespräch supervised the post-production of the recording, and makes much of the way in which live concert balances were altered to emphasize the theatrical and visual aspects of the pieces for a sound-only recording. These manipulations add an electro-acoustic element over and above what was originally written in the score, for better or worse. Zweigespräch is in fact an electroacoustic work, with a very prominent synthesizer part, which is Kurtág Jr's province; a 'dialogue' between the composing styles of father and son, the work is fluid and tense, building dense textures between the acoustic and electronic lines. … concertante … is a complex work for large forces, used with Kurtág's typical economy of gesture; its strange, wandering, ambiguous style nevertheless generates powerful emotional resonances. Hipartita is an extended solo violin work in 8 strikingly varied movements, ranging from enigmatic to confrontationally direct. The disc is filled out with extracts from his Jákétok and transcriptions, on a curious instrument dear to him: a heavily muted upright piano, long his practice and reference piano of choice, but an unusual item to encounter in the concert hall. 2 CDs for the price of 1.