György Kurtág - Kafka-Fragmente
ECM 2006 | EAC image + CUE
Wins Modern Music Prize of Japan’s Record Academy Awards 2006.
Also received the quarterly award of the German Record Critics (Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, Bestenliste 2/2006)
The album received the Coup de Cœur Musique Contemporaine of France’s Academie Charles Cros, while its composer was given a Lifetime Achievement Award from the same institution.
The hour-long Kafka-Fragments, completed in 1986, is his biggest work to date: it’s a characteristic cycle of 40 tiny movements, scored for soprano voice and violin, that adds up to something far greater than the sum of its parts. The text is a mosaic of quotations from Kafka’s writings, diaries and letters. The cycle is divided into four parts, articulated by the two longest movements; they draw a huge range of expression from soprano Juliane Banse and violinist András Keller. Banse’s nuances of vocal colouring are wonderfully subtle, while Keller can conjure up huge intensity from a single musical gesture. They show Kafka Fragments to be a quiet masterpiece of richness and emotional power.
Andrew Clements, The Guardian
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