Omaggio a Luigi Nono, for mixed choir a cappella, Op. 16
Choruses (8) to Poems by Dezsö Tandori, for chorus, Op. 23
Songs of Despair and Sorrow, choruses (6) for mixed choir & ensemble, Op. 18
Kurtág's choral music is recognizably the product of the same imagination that produced his exquisite vocal miniatures, the cycles Scenes from a Novel and Messages of the Late R.V. Troussova -- lean, concise, texturally spare, and almost Webernian, while at the same time being deeply expressive. The two a cappella works recorded here, Omaggio a Luigi Nono and Eight Choruses to Poems by Dezsö Tandori, fit that description well. The aphoristic poetry of Tandori, Anna Akhmatova, and Rimma Dalos inspired the composer to create ...
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Kurtág's choral music is recognizably the product of the same imagination that produced his exquisite vocal miniatures, the cycles Scenes from a Novel and Messages of the Late R.V. Troussova -- lean, concise, texturally spare, and almost Webernian, while at the same time being deeply expressive. The two a cappella works recorded here, Omaggio a Luigi Nono and Eight Choruses to Poems by Dezsö Tandori, fit that description well. The aphoristic poetry of Tandori, Anna Akhmatova, and Rimma Dalos inspired the composer to create music of comparable economy, and only a few movements last more than two minutes. A chorus is capable of making a huge sound, not an elemental characteristic of the composer's aesthetic, and Kurtág uses the resource judiciously. The choral writing is original, but fully idiomatic, and at the same time ethereally delicate and grindingly dissonant, with great textural inventiveness and gestural variety. The Songs of Despair and Sorrow sound more conventionally choral and are more...
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