This February marks the 100th birthday of György Kurtág, one of the greatest figures in Hungarian music. The Budapest Music Center is celebrating this momentous occasion not only with a two-week festival, but also with two new recordings of Kurtág’s works, the first of which, featuring the latest version of the Lichtenberg Aphorisms, will be released in February 2026.

18th-century physicist, mathematician and writer Georg Christoph Lichtenberg jotted down thousands of brief, often ironic thoughts over three decades from 1764 in his scribble books, which were published posthumously under the title Aphorisms. György Kurtág, a master of concise, dense musical communication, has been working on this collection for three decades, collaborating with soprano Maria Husmann from the outset. The first version of the 22-movement song cycle, written for solo voice, was completed in 1996, followed in 1999 by a second version, expanded with a double bass part at Husmann’s suggestion. In recent years, they have reworked the piece once again, and this album is the result of that intensive collaborative effort. From the very first encounter, the listener is captivated by the music’s inventive and unaffected gestures, the sonic reflections of Lichtenberg’s linguistic ingenuity and playfulness, and with repeated listening, the subtle structural elements and compositional problems hidden behind the humor also start to appear. The double bass part has a highly varied function: it accompanies, plays preludes and postludes, and conjures up atmospheric timbres, but above all it is the singer’s partner in dialogue and discussion. A special feature of the album is that Kurtág reads the aphorisms as an introduction, and the cycle is complemented by six of his piano pieces and transcriptions in his own performance.

Maria Husmann is an opera singer, director, and educator, specializing in 20th- and 21st-century music. She has worked with such renowned composers as Luciano Berio, George Crumb, Aribert Reimann, Hans Werner Henze, and Philipp Glass. For more than 30 years, she has been close friends with György Kurtág and the late Márta Kurtág. She has sung almost all of Kurtág’s works for soprano around the world, and she will premiere the composer’s second opera, Die Stechardin, written between 2023 and 2025, through several years of joint work. Niek de Groot was principal double bassist with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra for ten years before devoting himself to his chamber music and solo career. He has worked with composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Kaija Saariaho, Wolfgang Rihm, Pēteris Vasks, Sofia Gubaidulina, and Sebastian Fagerlund, who enriched the double bass repertoire with works composed for him. His artistic collaboration with György Kurtág dates back to 1987, and he has been working on his compositions together with Maria Husmann since 1994.