György Kurtág

György Kurtág
Kurtág in 2014 by Lenke Szilágyi
Born (1926-02-19) 19 February 1926
Lugoj, Romania
Occupations
  • Composer
  • pianist
WorksList of compositions
Spouse
(m. 1947; died 2019)
Awards

György Kurtág (Hungarian: [ˈɟørɟ ˈkurtaːɡ]; born 19 February 1926) is a Hungarian composer of contemporary classical music and pianist. According to Grove Music Online, his style draws on "Bartók, Webern and, to a lesser extent, Stravinsky", and "his work is characterized by compression in scale and forces, and by a particular immediacy of expression". In 2023 he was described as "one of the last living links to the defining postwar composers of the European avant-garde".

Kurtág was an academic teacher of piano at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music from 1967, later also of chamber music, and taught until 1993. For decades, Kurtág and his wife Márta gave recitals on one piano of selections from his ten-volume collection Játékok and his Bach transcriptions.