György Kurtág, Kafka Fragments Op. 24
Caroline Melzer, soprano
Nurit Stark, violin
BIS Hybrid SACD 2175
The Hungarian composer György Kurtág was a fellow-student of
György Ligeti at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest in the late 1940’s and
studied with Olivier Messiaen and Darius Milhaud during the year he spent in
Paris in 1957-8. The Kafka Fragments are one of his best-known and most
frequently-recorded compositions. The origins of this unusual and complex song
cycle for soprano and solo violin go back to his year of exile in Paris. It was
during that year that Kurtág began collecting fragments from the works of Franz
Kafka – not from his published works but from his notebooks, diaries, and
letters. At the same time Kurtág was helped to recover from a major depression
by the psychotherapist Mariann Stein, to whom he eventually dedicated the Kafka
Fragments, which he began to compose in 1985 and completed in 1987.
The word ‘fragment’ in the title is to be taken quite
literally. This piece contains 40 songs (for want of a better word), divided
into four sections. Each song is drawn from an observation or aphorism. Unlike some
more famous song cycles the texts are a wonderful read without musical
accompaniment, and Kurtág shows great skill as a curator of Kafka’s marginalia.
The flavor of the piece, and perhaps also its central theme, comes across very
clearly in the longest song in the cycle – “The true path”, which is the only
song in the second section. In Kafka’s words (translated by Julia and Peter
Sherwood). “The true path goes by way of a rope that is suspended not high up,
but rather just above the ground. Its purpose seems to be more to make one
stumble than to walk on”. Kafka aficionados will recognize the sentiment.
The haunting and fragmentary words are set to music of great
expressiveness, but it is an expressiveness that does its work through economy
and suggestion. Many of the songs last less than a minute, with two coming in
at 17 seconds. The combination of soprano and violin is very effective for the
texts. In the final song (“The moonlit night dazzled us”) the soprano enters
into a wordless song, but elsewhere the violin picks up on moods and nuances
hinted at by the words, using the instrument’s full harmonic, rhythmic, and
percussive ranges.
Caroline Melzer and Nurit Stark are very much attuned to
each other and to the sound-world of the song cycle. The sound quality on this
hybrid SACD is first rate (I listened in two-channel, but 5.0 surround sound is
also available), and the program notes are well-written and informative. I
highly recommend this disc.
