Marking the 100th birthday of György Kurtág, the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Elena Schwarz, joined forces with pianist Víkingur Ólafsson at the Queen Elizabeth Hall for a programme celebrating the composer’s trademark intense quiet. The concert, presented by Tom Service, showcased Kurtág’s many shades of pianissimo, interspersed with works by Bach, Schumann, Webern, and Mark Simpson.
The occasional louder moments were breathtaking. A phrase in Ólafsson’s piano arrangement of Bach’s Air on the G String briefly bared its musculature, and Kurtág’s Hommage à R Sch featured snarling viola and clarinet against Ólafsson’s silken piano. Mark Simpson’s Hommage à Kurtág opened with fierce passion, and monumental brass boomed across Kurtág’s … quasi una fantasia … Op 27 No 1 before dropping to unveil delicate string harmonics.
Ólafsson’s handling of every barely audible note was masterful. Playing a muted upright piano with his wife Halla Oddný Magnúsdóttir, the trills of Twittering from Játékos were liquid oscillations. Moving to a Steinway grand, he spun an unbroken thread through a sequence culminating in Kurtág’s ethereal arrangement of the slow movement of Haydn’s String Quartet in G major, Op 76 No 1.
Webern’s Passacaglia Op 1 sounded voluptuous under Schwarz, while Kurtág’s … quasi una fantasia … was performed by musicians scattered throughout the auditorium, offering a thrilling analogue surround-sound experience. The capacity audience sat utterly silent throughout, witnessing a rare intensity of both musical expression and listening.
