Budapest: György Kurtág, Ivan Fischer and Márta Sebestyén

Music Matters

Kate Molleson travels to Budapest to meet Hungary’s greatest living composer, György Kurtág, now 97 years old. Kurtag talks to Kate about the musical homages that he has made to friends, his early focus on the clarity of single notes at the time he wrote his Op.1 String Quartet, the influence of languages on his compositional style, and his new opera, a work based on the life of the German mathematician, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Above all, he talks about his Marta, his wife of over 70 years, with whom he performed piano duets, and he reveals to Kate why he stayed in Hungary in 1956.

Kurtag once said that his mother tongue is Bartok, and Kate visits the Bela Bartok Memorial House where she talks to the curator, Zoltán Farkas, about the composer’s relationship with Hungary and the folk traditions that he collected both at home and in neighbouring countries. During a break in a busy rehearsal schedule, the conductor Ivan Fischer also shares his views on Bartok and the distinctive sound of the Budapest Festival Orchestra.

Kate joins the director of the Hungarian Radio Choir, Zoltán Pad, and the composer Daniel Dinyes, to learn how the Hungarian language is expressed in music, and hear more about the unique sound of the choir. Kate also meets Hungary’s queen of song, Márta Sebestyén, who is at the very heart of Hungary’s folk music. Márta Sebestyén talks with pride about her mother, a celebrated student of Zoltan Kodaly, about her own travels in search of pure folk music. She treats Kate, too, to a traditional Christmas carol.