Kurtág: Requiem for the Beloved, Op. 26

Description

A four-movement song cycle created between 1982 and 1987 to the texts of Rimma Dalos, a Russian poet living in Hungary. The songs, composed in short, four-line verses, are masterful musical representations of the state of mind of the abandoned woman. (Works with a similar concept in Kurtág's oeuvre, e.g. Messages of the Late R. V. Truszova, Scenes from a Novel, Three Old Inscriptions). The work was performed for the first time on October 13, 1989, in London by Adrienne Csengery and Zoltán Kocsis. An audio recording was also made of the fourth song, on which the composer plays the piano.