Today, György Kurtág, one of the most important European contemporary composers, turns 100.

Born on February 19, 1926, in Lugoj, he lived and worked for many years in Budapest, where he taught at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music.

His intense, concentrated, and fragmentary style—characterized by very short pieces of great expressive depth—has influenced generations of musicians.

I pay tribute to Kurtág’s poetics by presenting a version for solo bassoon of Pilinszky János: Gérard de Nerval, taken from his vocal cycles for voice and piano, Op. 17, dedicated to twentieth-century Hungarian poetry—an extraordinary example of dialogue between poetry and music.

The bassoon version derives from the one for solo cello. The dark and introspective timbre of these instruments gives the piece, which moves almost on tiptoe, an almost “human” depth.

A small act of reverence, then, before a giant of contemporary music.