Kafka Fragments 1

Cal Performances Presents Program Sunday, November 23, 2008, 7pm Monday, November 24, 2008, 8pm Part II Zellerbach Playhouse 1. Der wahre Weg (Hommage-message à Pierre Boulez) Part III Kafka Fragments 1. Haben? Sein? 2. Der Coitus als Bestrafung György Kurtág composer 3. Meine Gefägnisszelle Dawn Upshaw soprano 4. Schmutzig bin ich, Milená… Geoff Nuttall violin 5. Elendes Leben (Double) Peter Sellars director 6. Der begrenzte Kreis David Michalek photography 7. Ziel, Weg, Zögern Anna Kiraly costume design 8. So fest James F. Ingalls lighting design 9. Penetrant jüdisch Jenny Lazar production stage manager 10. Verstecke (Double) Diane J. Malecki producer 11. Staunend sahen wir das Grosse Pferd 12. Szene in der Elektrischen, 1910 (»Ich bat im Traum die Tänzerin Eduardowa, sie möchte doch den Csárdás noch eimal tanzen.«) 2 Part IV PROGRAM 1. Zu spät (22. Oktober 1913) 2. Eine lange Geschichte György Kurtág (b. 1926) Kafka Fragments, Op. 24 (1985–1987) 3. In memoriam Robert Klein 4. Aus einem alten Notizbuch Part I 5. Leoparden 1. Die Guten gehn im gleichen Schritt… 6. In memoriam Johannis Pilinszky 2. Wie ein Weg im Herbst 7. Wiederum, wiederum 3. Verstecke 8. Es blendete uns die Mondnacht 4. Ruhelos 5. Berceuse I 6. Nimmermehr (Excommunicatio) 2 7. »Wenn er mich immer frägt.« 8. Es zupfte mich jemand am Kleid 9. Die Weissnäherinnen Kafka Fragments was produced by Carnegie Hall in association with 10. Szene am Bahnhof Old Stories: New Lives and received its premiere on January 10, 2005, in Zankel Hall. 11. Sonntag, den 19. Juli 1910 (Berceuse II) (Hommage à Jeney) This revival of Kafka Fragments has been commissioned by Cal Performances, 12. Meine Ohrmuschel… Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. 13. Einmal brach ich mir das Bein 14. Umpanzert This evening’s performance is approximately 70 minutes long with no intermission. 15. Zwei Spazierstücke Dawn Upshaw appears by arrangement with IMG Artists, 152 West 57th Street, 16. Keine Rückkehr Fifth Floor, New York, New York 10019, tel. (212) 994-3500. 17. Stolze (1910/15 November, zehn Uhr) Cal Performances’ 2008–2009 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo Bank. 18. Träumend hing die Blume 19. Nichts dergleichen 4 CAL PERFORMANCES CAL PERFORMANCES 5 Program Notes Program Notes György Kurtág (b. 1926) Apart from a viola concerto, dating from when adult music having those same qualities—though In its company is a violin, which is to some Kafka Fragments, Op. 24 (1985–1987) he was himself in training at the Liszt Academy, he was to go on writing slowly and circumspectly. extent a twin or mirror in the same soprano regis- his earliest published work is a string quartet, The Kafka-Fragmente were gradually assembled ter, though able to reach much higher. The violin In a fragment—in the suddenness and the rough which he wrote in 1959, after a year in Paris. He through the years 1985–1987; other works have can be an accompaniment, a bass, but more often breaks—we may see more than in something had gone there to study with Olivier Messiaen and taken many years to find a final form. it is above the voice, and very often what it offers whole and finished. Simply by separating the short Darius Milhaud, but he gained much more from a Most of his compositions since 1973 have been is an image of what the voice is singing about, texts here from their context, making them into psychotherapist, Marianne Stein, who helped him vocal settings—the word “songs” does not seem whether this be abstract or concrete: a completed fragments, Kurtág lets these extracts from Kafka’s at what was a time of crisis. right for these intense utterances—to words by circle or musicians on a tram, a pathway or furtive private writings expand, so that a tiny anecdote, To go further with even this capsule biogra- leading Hungarian poets (János Pilinszky, Dezső hiding places. or even just a few words, can bulge with meaning. phy risks irrelevance, for what is important about Tandori), by a Hungarian writing in Russian The images are compressed. Many of these Aligning so many of them, he allows a whole view Kurtág is all in his art, not his life. Nevertheless, (Rimma Dalos), and latterly by international writ- fragmentary texts are compacted tales; they are like of life to emerge in shards and spaces. Then, in set- there is some justification for considering this a cru- ers in whose company he by now belongs: Friedrich those bits of crumpled paper which, when dropped ting them to music, he makes them speak. Each is cial moment, if only because he himself did so in Hölderlin, Anna Akhmatova, Samuel Beckett and, into water (the music), unfold into flowers. Even a quick glance into the mirror that Kafka’s writing the only interview he has allowed to be published: indeed, Franz Kafka. Since the late 1980s, now when so unfurled in these settings, a lot of them gave him, the mirror of an artist whose edges are “I realized to the point of despair that nothing I widely acclaimed, he has also written works on a are only around a minute long, and the shortest are his own: between irony and anxiety, between with- had believed to constitute the world was true.... I larger scale, including most recently ...concertante .. over in ten seconds. drawal and explosion, between creative potency was staying with another pupil of Marianne Stein, for violin, viola, and orchestra, his Opus 42. A few pieces that are much longer serve to and indecision. an American actress, and instead of paying rent I The Kafka-Fragmente came as the great culmi- articulate the form. The 20th—“The True Path,” Kurtág is, as Kafka was, someone for whom would walk her two children in the park. The park nation of a period during which he had been work- marking the halfway point—seems to reflect on the practice of an art is a way of being, demanding in question was the Parc Montsouris—a mag- ing intensively with Hungarian soprano Adrienne all that has happened so far, and Kurtág isolates total devotion, sustained through periods when nificent place, with fantastic trees. The impression Csengery. (It has been said that, with so much it as, by itself, the second of the work’s four parts. very little is achieved. There is no time off. To put made on me by these trees in winter was maybe experience of coaching at the Liszt Academy, he The third part returns to the disruption of the first, it another way, there is no escape. Everything is then my first reality. That lasted until spring, and treats students as if they were professionals and to end with an impression from life, touching on required from the artist—but not in the interests the appearance of my second reality: birds.” professionals as if they were students.) The work the whole work’s concerns with seemliness and of autobiography, which is only a story about the This almost reads like a Kafka fragment that was written for her—in a sense, through her—and needfulness: “Scene on the Tram.” Made largely self, whereas in Kurtág’s lean compositions and in Kurtág could have set. In gratitude to Stein, he it demands from its singer an involvement paral- of longer pieces, the fourth part is, as it were, the Kafka’s similarly economical prose we meet a self dedicated his quartet, his Opus 1, to her. Nearly 30 leling the composer’s, an involvement, then, that adagio finale, arriving at a resolute and strength- entire. A voice is speaking. What it says may be years later, he dedicated to her another work, his vanishes into the task at hand. ened clarity. fable and paradox, but those are ways to the truth. longest so far, his Opus 24: the Kafka-Fragmente. That task is to give the most vivid expression One may note how often the imagery, in the There are other connections. Both the writer That is one mark of this score’s importance. possible to the texts, which come from Kafka’s dia- music as in the text, is of journeying. The great and the composer stand within a rich central Slow to make what he could regard as a real be- ries and from his letters to his closest confidante, song cycle of the early 19th century was a trave- European Jewish tradition, which they at once rad- ginning (he was 33 years old when he finished the Milená Jesenská. This is all intimate writing. The logue: Schubert’s Winterreise. Here, from the late icalize and honor. Both ask us searching questions quartet), he was slow to continue. A wind quintet voice is an interior one, the voice with which a 20th century, is a successor. The journey, though, about what we are, and about where we think we came next, in the same year of 1959, after which his great writer’s mind speaks to itself, or to its second is all within. are going. Both invite us—forcibly, sinuously—to creativity sputtered out in tiny instrumental pieces. self—which is no limitation on passion, volume share their dedication and their honesty. He then took several years to complete his first vo- or variety of tone. The voice is urgent, whimsical, Their conjunction, in this work, seems inevi- cal composition, The Sayings of Péter Bornemisza, stentorian, vulnerable, and often all of those at Paul Griffths table—though Kurtág was 60 before he was ready a setting for soprano and piano of extracts from once.

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