Scherpdenkers: Arnon Grunberg, Katrien Baerts & Wibert Aerts

Kurtag

In the Kafka year, author Arnon Grunberg highlights a writer who fascinates him: Franz Kafka. Violinist Wibert Aerts and soprano Katrien Baerts perform Kurtág's Kafka Fragmente . This composer graduated from the Franz Liszt Music Academy in Budapest in 1955. He continued his search for his aesthetic in Paris with Messiaen and Milhaud. His meeting with psychologist Marianne Stein, to whom he would later dedicate his Kafka Fragmente, greatly influenced him. Stein advised him to set himself small musical tasks to find his voice. He found it in concentrated musical fragments.

Kafka

Like Kurtág, Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was born in Austria-Hungary. Yet Kafka was focused on the German language and culture. His concise lyrics provided fertile ground for Kurtág's aphoristic music. Kurtág set forty fragments of text to music and compiled them into the cycle Kafka-Fragmente. In Kurtág's pieces, Kafka paints images of everyday reality and his emotional world. With him and Kurtág, the listener walks the path to an open ending.

The May 14 production was previously shown at the Festival 20.21 in Leuven, Belgium.