György Kurtág is often placed alongside avant-garde composers of the Second World War – Boulez, Stockhausen, Ligeti – and although in many respects he truly belongs among them, in terms of his connection to music history, Kurtág can be considered the odd one out in this company. For him, the search for novelty was never possible without a close connection to the classical tradition. His early viola concerto begins with the iconic timpani strokes of Beethoven's Violin Concerto, and there is no piece of his that does not reveal the presence of some important composer from the past thousand years. In addition to Kurtág's works, Gábor Csalog's concert will also feature classical pieces, making it clear that these connections are sometimes so concrete that Kurtág's musical universe is populated by fragments of music history like stars in the night sky. The discussion in the first half of the evening will not only focus on György Kurtág's relationship with music history, but also on a number of more general issues, as Gábor Csalog has been playing Kurtág for half a century and has been part of the hundred-year-old Kurtág's life and work for fifty years.
The language of the discussion is Hungarian.

Further concerts in this series:
23 November 2025 6 PM – Gábor Csalog Sundays – Dialogues with (the) Music | Mahler and Schubert
25 January 2026 6 PM – Gábor Csalog Sundays – Dialogues with (the) Music | Chopin and Mendelssohn
22 March 2026 6 PM – Gábor Csalog Sundays – Dialogues with (the) Music | Schumann and Brahms