Víkingur Ólafsson celebrates Kurtág at 100

Learn to ‘listen differently’ as the Philharmonia’s Featured Artist Víkingur Ólafsson celebrates the 100th birthday of György Kurtág. 

Ólafsson’s meticulous and deeply personal performances and recordings have encouraged his many fans to listen anew to music ranging from the 17th century to the present day. And the music of Hungarian composer György Kurtág, the concentrated essence of an era-defining career spanning seven decades, addresses the phenomenon of sound and the act of listening itself.  

In this 45-minute concert, explore a web of composers from across the centuries paying tribute to those who came before them.  

In Kurtág’s … quasi una fantasia…, groups of musicians spread around the hall create a sometimes dreamlike, sometimes nightmarish soundworld from fragments of remembered melody.  

Cellist István Várdai joins Ólafsson and the fantastically skilled musicians of the Philharmonia for Kurtág’s elegiac Double Concerto. Pianist and cellist (the latter playing two cellos, and using an extensive repertoire of contemporary techniques) weave their sound through an ensemble including cimbalom (a string instrument played with small hammers), harps and an array of percussion.