Kossuth Prize
1 appearances
-
Edition 19 (1973) Winner
György Kurtág
クルトゥーグ・ジェルジ
György Kurtág
Aliases:
Kurtág György
Profile
- Gender
- Male
- Born
- 1926-02-19 （Lugoj）
- Nationality
- Hungarian
- Languages
- Hungarian
- Residence History
- Lugoj, Romania → Timișoara, Romania → Budapest, Hungary → Paris, France → Netherlands → Berlin, Germany → Near Bordeaux, France
Career
- Occupations
- Composer, Pianist
- Active Years
- 1946-2024
- Affiliations
- Franz Liszt Academy of Music (Professor)
- Memberships
- Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Honorary Member, American Academy of Arts and Letters
- Influenced By
- Béla Bartók, Anton Webern, Igor Stravinsky, Olivier Messiaen
- Influenced
- Zoltán Kocsis, András Schiff
Education
| Institution | Faculty | Department | Degree | Period | Country |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Franz Liszt Academy of Music | — | Piano, Chamber Music, Composition | — | 1946-1955 | Hungary |
| Private studies in Paris | — | Composition | — | 1957-1958 | France |
Franz Liszt Academy of Music
Piano, Chamber Music, Composition
Period:
1946-1955
Year of Graduation:
1955
Country:
Hungary
Piano: Pál Kadosa, Composition: Sándor Veress and Ferenc Farkas, Chamber music: Leó Weiner, Theory: Lajos Bárdos
Private studies in Paris
Composition
Period:
1957-1958
Country:
France
Max Deutsch, Olivier Messiaen, Darius Milhaud
Awards
| Year | Award | Work | Category | Organization | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1973 | Kossuth Prize | — | — | Government of Hungary | won |
| 1998 | Ernst von Siemens Music Prize | — | — | Siemens Foundation | won |
| 2006 | Grawemeyer Award | …concertante… Op. 42 | — | University of Louisville | won |
| 2014 | BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award | — | Contemporary Music | BBVA Foundation | won |
| 2024 | Wolf Prize | — | — | Wolf Foundation | won |
Kossuth Prize
1973
Organization:
Government of Hungary
Result:
won
Ernst von Siemens Music Prize
1998
Organization:
Siemens Foundation
Result:
won
Grawemeyer Award
2006
Work:
…concertante… Op. 42
Organization:
University of Louisville
Result:
won
BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award
2014
Category:
Contemporary Music
Organization:
BBVA Foundation
Result:
won
Wolf Prize
2024
Organization:
Wolf Foundation
Result:
won
Awards & Nominations
Works
Major Works
Játékok
1973 Piano piecesA ten-volume collection of fragmentary piano pieces, some lasting seconds.
fragmentsparodyminiatures
Kafka-Fragments, Op. 24
1987 Song cycleSong cycle for soprano and violin in 40 short movements setting Kafka fragments.
Kafkafragmentsdespair
Stele, Op. 33
1994 Orchestral workLarge-scale orchestral work for Berlin Philharmonic and Abbado.
memorialcompression
Fin de Partie
2018 OperaOnly opera, based on Beckett's Endgame, premiered at La Scala.
Beckettendgame
Bibliography
- List of compositions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Gy%C3%B6rgy_Kurt%C3%A1g
Style & Themes
- Literary Style
- compression in scale and forcesimmediacy of expressionminiaturesWebernian
- Recurring Motifs
- fragmentsspatial distributionBeckett and Kafka textssimple musical elements
Health
-
severe depression1957-1958Experienced despair, therapy by Marianne Stein revived him and marked a turning point in his art.
Legacy
Described as one of the last living links to the defining postwar composers of the European avant-garde.
Quotes
-
I realized to the point of despair that nothing I had believed to constitute the world was true.
Source: David Murray interview (2006)
Trivia
- Born in Lugoj, Romania, to Hungarian-Jewish parents.
- Married pianist Márta Kurtág in 1947; she died in 2019 after decades of collaboration.
- Taught Zoltán Kocsis and András Schiff at Liszt Academy.