The Music of György Kurtág

recording

"Vivid, profound and totally compelling"

Andrew Clements, The Guardian U.K.

the edge of silence

Susan Narucki’s recording The Edge of Silence: Vocal Chamber Music of György Kurtág was released in August 2019 on AVIE, with Donald Berman, piano and Curtis Macomber, violin; along with Nicholas Tolle, cimbalom, and Kathryn Schulmeister, doublebass.

The Edge of Silence received a 2019 Grammy Nomination in the category of Best Classical Vocal Album.

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Programs/Repertoire

kafka fragments
susan narucki soprano
curtis macomber violin

Hungarian composer György Kurtág's seventy-five-minute multi-movement work uses fragments of texts from the diaries of Franz Kafka, to create a kaleidoscopic world of sound, sense and expression. Each fragment – some lasting less than a minute –is singular and potent; each movement offers a glimpse of a distinct viewpoint, and each gain in meaning through juxtapositions throughout the work as a whole.

Susan Narucki and Curtis Macomber, longtime advocates for the music of our time, collaborate on the performance.

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written on air

The relationship between musical forms and poetry, through the ephemeral medium of the singing voice.
The program includes two of Kurtág’s cycles for voice and piano, Requiem for the Beloved and Three Old Inscriptions, as well as József Attila – Töredékek for unaccompanied soprano. The fifty-minute program also features the world premiere of works for soprano and piano by the esteemed Mexican composer Georgina Debrez.

Susan Narucki, soprano
Gonzalo Gutiérrez Ortega, piano

Quinto Coloquio de poesía iberoamerican elsa cross
October 6 2023 7 p.m. Auditorio Divino Narciso Mexico City

El colegio nacional
october 10, 2023 6 p.M.
El colegio nacional Main hall Centro historico mexico city.

Exhibits

approaching kurtág

Art Around books 5 Canal St, Bellows Falls, VT 05101

On View August 11 Through September 9, 2023

Curated by Susan Narucki, the exhibit Approaching Kurtág is on view at Art Around Books from August 11 through September 9, 2023.

“ Each of the five artists in the exhibit, Jinane Abbadi, Michele Burgess, Bill Kelly, Olda Procházka and Jim Renner, have, contained within the borders of each print, a unique language. These images, which themselves have been created in conversation with poetry, prose, frameworks of language and broader ideas, resonate with recurring themes of the Kafka Fragments. The beauty and chaos of cities; the abyss of the divine, the unending complexities of human relationships, the loneliness of the outsider, the joyous heartbreak of living. Approaching Kurtag offers another space for the imagination of the listener and viewer to inhabit, wander and explore.” - Susan Narucki

Susan Narucki and Curtis Macomber performed Kafka Fragments on August 11, 2023, the opening of the exhibit; audience members received a commemorative hand sewn book with a curator’s essay about the music and the exhibit.