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KURTÁG,
György, b.1926
Zoli Kocsis’s Manuscript Book / Kocsis Zoli Hangjegyfüzete
The History of the Manuscript Book. Postscript: The Contents of the Manuscript
[Games, piano, selected works]
Budapest,
2016. 25 x 34 cm, 96, 10/10 pp, audio CD. Full-color facsimile in the original format of a manuscript version of “Games” issued on the occasion of Kurtág’s 90th birthday.
Games” is a series of piano pieces written for both teaching purposes and public performance. In the autumn of 1974 the composer (pupil of Messiaen & Milhaud and a close colleague of György Ligeti) began to copy selected pieces from Games into a special spiral-bound notebook for Zoltán Kocsis, a former piano student and important interpreter of Kurtág’s works. Kocsis played from this notebook in the first public performance of Games in 1974, and since then as well, as the series was expanded over a 30 year period. Koscis writes: “I didn't know that the spiral notebook I received at the premiere would later become, as it were, my permanent companion. That I would take it with me from Japan to Canada, from Australia to Iceland, traveling to the world's most prominent concert halls... that— well beyond the intention of its being 'copied with love'—it would include works and sketches for which this notebook would become the principal source”. The MS-notebook with 65 pieces—one third of them hommages to contemporary composers—provides a wonderful glimpse into Kurtág's workshop, of equal interest to performers and musicologists. The former can understand more from Kurtág's handwriting about the composer's intentions than from the printed score and musicologists can appreciate the historical development of the works as some appear in more than one version and may differ from the printed score. With commentary in Hung-Eng by Zoltán Kocsis, and audio CD with 11 works performed by Kocsis from a recording made in 1982 not previously available. Limited edition of 600 copies issued on the occasion of Kurtág’s 90th birthday. $110
(see
listing
of other 20th-century works)
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