On March 29th, starting 18:30 o'clock, Radio Romania Muzical, will broadcast live, from the "Modern Cluj'' Festival, the performance of the "Transilvania'' Philharmonic Choir, from "Gheorghe Dima'' Music School in Cluj-Napoca. The program includes works of Romanian composers, as well as a first world performance of a work signed by . The concert will be broadcast live in the European Union Radio network, rendering this event into a European-scale one.


Maestro, this year you are the special guest of the ''Modern Cluj'' Contemporary Music Festival. On this occasion, for the first time, the audience will listen the work entitled 'The ballad carol'. What is the genesis of this work and to what extent is it related to the Romanian traditions?

It is entirely related to the Romanian traditions and to my life for about 20 years, which I spent in Romania. ''The ballad carol'' bears the following dedication: "In the memory of professor Felician Brânzeu'. He was our Romanian teacher from the second to the fourth grade, at the "Coriolan Bradiceanu'' highschool in Lugoj. The memory of my teacher came up when professor Constantin Stan from Lugoj wrote me a letter one day, telling me that he, together with some public intellectuals, had proposed me as citizen of honour of the city. I must say that these questions of 'honour' are of little importance to me, but the fact that Lugoj had thought of me mattered a lot to me. Back then, some two years ago, professor Stan was preparing for his thesis on the musical history of Lugoj. He contacted professor Francisc Laszlo in Cluj, whom I had met long back and who sent me a work of Felician Brânzeu, my teacher, on the Vocative case in music.
This fact was of such great importance to me; especially since I have this essay, so its intensity and heaviness recommended it for Bartok' or Ligeti's folklore studies, which were like some kind of models to me. Anyway, I was greatly moved and my whole past, my whole childhood, which I had long forgotten, came back upon me. Professor Stan also told me that he kept in touch with 'Vidul' Choir in Lugoj, which also brought back memories; in childhood, I used to listen to this choir a lot and the choir sonority was something quite contemporary for me. I wanted to submit with a work, for which I had strived for a year and a half. A year and a half for a carol which I found in Bartok's collection, 'Romanian carols in Transylvania'; a carol from the county of Hunedoara, which became very important to me, from a mythological point of view as well. It is one of my most precious compositions. I worked hard for it, indeed (here, mister Kurtag recited us the entire text of the carol light-heartedly). I haven't told you about two very special details. Adrian Pop, the current rector (i.e. at the 'Gheorghe Dima' Music School in Cluj-Napoca) used to be a colleague of mine, he himself a composer. I knew his works on carols and during my working process I sent him the score for choir and he gave me some extraordinary advice. He was also very harsh on me, but helped a lot, truly. So I have to thank him for the composition. And one more thing: I have worked for five days with the choir from Cluj and with maestro Cornel Groza. He is a fabulous personality indeed, endowed with a sense of humour and with an astonishing ambition. Rehearsals are not a joke at all.


Recently, on January 31 to be more exact, you had several works performed at Carnegie Hall in New York, among them 'Four Poems of Anna Akhmatova' in premiere. And the second day you had a four-hand piano concert, together with your wife. How did the American audience receive György Kurtag, the performer and composer?

I felt fine. I have to mention that when we perform together (I've been married for 62 years and for 62 years we've been making music together) we're happy, and as far as I'm concerned, if I feel that something pleases my wife, I'm also pleased.


I would like to ask you to turn back in time and talk about the 50s, which you spent in Paris. Besides becoming acquainted with and studying with Olivier Messiaen and Darius Mihaud, another encounter to influence your evolution as an artist was that with Marianne Stein, psychoanalyst, about whom you once said that it helped you 'rediscover' yourself.

It did. She was indeed a very important presence in my life. My life-model was Felician Branzeu, at first. Then, my piano teacher in Timisoara - Magda Cardos - who became later on a professor at the Music School in Cluj. And Marianne Stein...After the year spent with her, I felt that I would try and change my life. I was under the impression that I had found what I was supposed to look for. Morally and artistically speaking.

Since we are at the pedagogical section - you are teaching piano and chamber music, and your students say that you aren't the most comfortable teacher to get along with. You used to be very demanding.

I don't know. I am demanding but I am not against the students, my intention is to make some real music. Perhaps because of something more, a little egotistical - the sheer inspiration it gives me. It is my hobby; I could say that teaching is my hobby. I can analyze a composition, a quartet from Beethoven's last years or one of Bartok's quartets, but I grasp it completely only when I'm working on it. It is then that I get the ideas, the inspiration, so I just take advantage of the fact that I'm working with quartets.


You mentioned Beethoven or Bartok and I know that you appreciate them very much. Which feature of their personality do you appreciate the most? Could it be the revolutionary tinge?

I don't know. But I must say that Beethoven and Bartok are the most important to me. At the same time, I discovered music when I was 11-12 years old, through Schubert's Sinfonie h-Moll D 759 ['Unvollendete']. His lieds and his entire creation mean a lot. When I got even closer to music, Monteverdi and Schutz have been of great significance for me, as well as Gregorian music. Unfortunately, I discovered folklore only through Bartok, indirectly, despite the fact that in my part of the country I could have heard so many folklore creations.


Your composition style has frequently been described as pure, sometimes an ascetic-like one, some critics have suggested. Do you agree?

With the ascetic-like part? I don't know, it's the critics' job to analyze it. I can't define it for you...it's just there...Indeed, it was I who wanted to learn music, I learned how to make a sonata and afterwards, when I started writing opus 1 - after the studies in Paris - I wanted to find a form for it myself. I found a very primitive form, indeed, but it belonged to me. Then, when I started Jocuri for piano, I found out that I no longer want any system, that I only have one reality - a C key in the middle of the keyboards and around it I can make a 'nest', as they do a folk song, for instance, or a Gregorian song.


An artist's life involves a lot of travelling, and yours is not an exception to this rule. You've lived in Romania, in Budapest, you've studied in Paris and Berlin, and you perform in the U.S.A. You've also lived in Holland for a while and now you also settled in France. Where do you feel like "home''?

I found out that I feel like home wherever my wife is. I work very well in France. We settled there because my son left Hungary in 1980 and we wanted to live near him and our grandchildren. We have a home near Bordeaux, but we also have an apartment in Budapest, because we feel like home there, too. And we were very happy when we went for the first time in Lugoj and Cluj as well.


So, this "home'' is rather a mood than a place. Does the mood matter more that the place where one is?

The mood and all the memories related to that place matter.


Author: Irina Vasilescu
Translated by Sînziana Mihalache and Andreea Banciu
MA students, MTTLC, Bucharest University