Kurtágiana

About the program

Kurtágiana celebrates György Kurtág in the year of his 100th birthday through a constellation of musical memories, affinities, and homages. Robert Schumann’s Märchenerzählungen stands beside Kurtág’s Hommage à R. Sch., where the music of an earlier composer becomes the starting point for an intensely personal response. Marco Stroppa’s Hommage à Gy. K. carries that gesture forward, turning toward Kurtág himself and extending the conversation across another generation.

The idea of homage then opens outward. Ana Sokolović’s Prelude and Fugue for GG, written as a tribute to Glenn Gould, approaches musical memory from a Canadian perspective, while Linda Catlin Smith’s intimate A Nocturne brings another voice—and another kind of concentrated listening—into the circle. Excerpts from Kurtág’s Signs, Games, Messages return us to the composer at the centre of the program: music of extraordinary compression, where a gesture, a silence, or a handful of notes can contain an entire world. Together, these works reflect SALT 2026: Proximity as a closeness across time—between composers and their predecessors, between performers and the music they inhabit, and between memories of the past and sounds made present.