The composers in Hungary who have come to maturity after the mid-1950s have been more fortunate than their seniors in several respects. Not only are they farther out of the shadow of Bartók and Kodály, but their formative development has not been interrupted or impeded either by war or by the ideological problems that faced composers in the early 1950s. At the upper end of this group is György Kurtág (b. 1926), who after completing his studies in Budapest, and writing a number of successful prentice works, spent a year in Paris (1957–58), and put ‘Op. 1’ only to the string quartet which was the outcome of his experience there. Of autodidactic inclination, he was influenced less by particular major figures than by the general creative atmosphere around him, but became a disciple of Webern, not so much in technique as in his asceticism and self-discipline, his concentration on intensity of content and creative effort rather than on its extent. He has never been prolific, and his output since 1958 is remarkably slender—five works in ten years. Besides the string quartet these consist of a wind quintet, a series of piano pieces, a set of duos for violin and cimbalom, a piece for unaccompanied viola, and most recently an extended cantata for solo voice and piano, on texts by the 16th-century Hungarian writer Péter Bornemisza, which was performed at Darmstadt last year. This is a taxing virtuoso work for both performers, of exceptional range and force of expressive utterance. At the opposite extreme stand the delightful duos for violin and cimbalom, terse and unassuming, yet absorbing in content and distinctive in character, brilliantly exploring the possibilities of the unusual medium without any reliance on curiosity value or striving after effect.
