For the Album
Maria Husmann has been a dedicated performer of my songs for three decades, singing almost all my works for soprano. We met in Berlin in the 90s, at the time when I started working on the song cycle on Lichtenberg aphorisms, originally for solo voice. Maria played an important role in the creation of the first (1996) and later (1999) forms of the work. At the Berlin premiere in November 1999, it was her idea to add the double bass part to the work, played by Cristian Sutter. The work has changed since 2019 during our work together: for the current recording, after numerous sessions with Maria Husmann and Niek de Groot, I have revised the series again, starting from the sheet music that has already been published. The recording contains this version. To my great delight, of the piano pieces I wrote in the last six years, the ones dearest to me have been included in the album.

György Kurtág

Remarks 
György Kurtág’s remarks on the cycle Einige Sätze aus den Sudelbüchern Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (Op. 37a), the premiere of which was given as an event of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (a creative house for scholars and artists) in 1999. After spells in 1993–1994 and 1994–1995, György Kurtág was 
again a scholarship-holder at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in 1998–1999. “By way of introduction, an anecdote. Annette Lepenies (Hieronimi) and Wolf Lepenies, rector of the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin, once invited us round, with Walter Levin (violinist, leader of the LaSalle Quartet, teacher). There, in 1995, Walter Levin asked if it was worth buying a new edition of Lichtenberg’s works. We were moderately familiar with the literature of the era, but I had never heard the name of Lichtenberg before. Then Wolf Lepenies read a few sentences by him, and it was marvellous to hear the particular ones he had chosen, and the manner in which he read them. One sentence ran: “The American who discovered Columbus made a terrible discovery”. The next day, I borrowed some volumes of Lichtenberg, and almost without exception, I copied the parts I found very exciting into my notebook. A year later, Maria Husmann and I were working on the Kafka-Fragments. At the time we were living in Vienna, and Maria had moved in with us. It was February, we were celebrating my 70th birthday, and a concert was planned in Berlin “in memory” of me. Then suddenly, instead of being able to work with Maria on the Kafka-Fragments, we went down with the flu for a very long time. Maria took care of us and instead of working, she nursed us. As it became increasingly clear that we would not be able to attend the concert in Berlin, I wanted to send at least one message and started working on the Lichtenberg aphorisms. Half in bed. Half in bed, yes. Then Maria sang the solo version at the Berlin Philharmonie. Originally I only wrote for soprano solo, but Maria wanted a little accompaniment just to be sure. She asked a double-bassist of the Berlin Philharmonic, Klaus Stoll, who improvised something very humorous. In the meantime, my publisher issued the solo version with the comment, “For God’s sake, please do not sing all 22 pieces at once, because that would be unbearable, only six or seven at a time, as Touropa says.” That is how the solo version came about. Then, a few months later, Maria wouldn’t leave me alone, and said: “We definitely want the duo version, I’m already improvising with bassist Christian Sutter and we want to show it to you.” They came to work at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin, and we improvised there in the garage, all night. Then Christian Sutter returned to Basel, and I wanted to notate what we had improvised, but in the end it turned into something completely different, and now it seems that this cycle of 22 songs works. It is terribly difficult for the double bass player, and playing with the singer is also very difficult. Unfortunately, we only had one day to rehearse, to work in the garage again, until well after midnight. Now we’ll hear what we came up with.” (12 November, 1999)

Aphorisms
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was born in 1742. In 1764, the year his mother died, he began to keep his Sudelbuchs, his Klitterbuchs. These were notebooks and books of scribblings that Lichtenberg did not intend for the public domain, and which could accordingly only be published after his death (1799) under the general title Aphorisms, which was given posthumously. For example, in one of his aphorisms dated 1775–1776, he wrote: “Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than having no opinions about anything.” His distinguished contemporary and admirer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, believed that “where Lichtenberg jokes, there is a really serious problem.” In one of his piquant and very acerbic remarks, he notes that “[t]here is no more deceitful and evil creature under the Sun than the whore, who becomes a zealous believer as she gets older. What did whores change into in the old days? Or were there holy Joes even then?” Although Lichtenberg’s scientific works are of lasting value, his true importance is due to his aphorisms. Christoph Hein (lyricist for György Kurtág’s second opera Die Stechardin) wrote of him: “Georg Christoph Lichtenberg studied mathematics, physics, and philosophy. He was active as a physicist, natural scientist, mathematician, and writer, and he was the first German professor to work in experimental physics. As an educator he had a pioneering role, because contrary to the custom at the time, he conducted experiments during his lectures. He flew paper kites to demonstrate to his students the electricity in storms, and he modelled the flight of balloons with pig bladders filled with gas. He is considered the father of the German aphorism. Beginning in 1764, Lichtenberg wrote down thousands of brief thoughts in several notebooks, ironically calling them waste-books (Sudelbücher). The remarks, often ironic in tone, attest both to his encyclopedic knowledge, his powers of sceptical observation, and to his receptiveness to everything new. The Sudelbücher were not published by Lichtenberg, and contemporaries were unable to read the aphorisms for which his oeuvre is admired today in Germany and all over the world. He was one of the greatest German philosophers, but unlike philosophers who created systems, like Kant, Hegel, or Marx, he shaped his ideas in deliberately fragmentary form, sporadically, but this does not make them more difficult to understand, and reading them is decidedly pleasurable. Throughout his life, Lichtenberg suffered from steadily worsening spinal distortion, which made it increasingly difficult for him to breathe, and often forced him to live bedridden for months. Because of the spinal deformity, he was hunchbacked and short in stature, about 140 cm tall. However, all this did not prevent him from commenting ironically on his miserable circumstances in his notebooks: “Compared to other people, my heart is at least a foot closer to my head, which is why I am so generous. Decisions can be confirmed in its warmth.” Some of Lichtenberg’s aphorisms seem to reveal a knowledge of the conflicts recent experience worldwide: “Suppose you wake up one morning and all of a sudden everybody has the same skin colour and the same religion. By midday, there are guaranteed to be new prejudices.” The first of the songs, the first version of which was written without accompaniment (Die Kartoffeln – The Potatoes) was written on 5 February 1996, and the last two, numbers 21 (Touropa) and 22 (Ein Gourmand – A Gourmand) were written at the very beginning of March. Kurtág did not give titles to all the movements at the time, nor did he consider the series itself to be a cycle to be performed in its entirety. In the 1998 edition of the work, the movements followed the chronological order of composition.  This solo version was premiered by Maria Husmann in Berlin. In the printed edition of the new version, completed in 1999 (the work was dedicated to Annette and Wolf Lepenies), there is already a title for each movement and the order of the songs was fixed. The double bass part has a highly varied function: it accompanies, plays preludes and postludes, and conjures up atmospheric timbres, but above all it is the singer’s partner in dialogue and discussion. The closest relative to Einige Sätze aus den Sudelbüchern Georg Christoph Lichtenberg is the S.K. Remembrance Noise (1974–1975) written for soprano and violin to poems by Dezső Tandori, but it is also at least as much a concerto as the Sayings of Péter Bornemisza (1963–1968) and as deeply personal as the Kafka-Fragments (1985-1987).  Already at the first encounter, the listener is captivated by the striking and unaffected gestures of the music, reflections in sound of Lichtenberg’s linguistic inventiveness and playfulness, and the phraseology that emphasizes the joke. According to Lichtenberg, “we treat jokes as we do music; the more we hear, the more subtle and refined twists we expect from them”. The expectation that the fine structure of the music will appear increasingly plastic after repeated listening is perfectly satisfied by Kurtág. To borrow Goethe’s phrase, the musical jokes of the Lichtenberg songs lead to serious problems. The Lichtenberg notebooks, written over a good three decades, can also be seen as an imprint of a characteristic creative method, a behaviour of the mind, or an inner emotional-spiritual need.  A similar role is played in György Kurtág’s career by the series for piano entitled Játékok (Games), originally written with pedagogical aims, and consisting of several books, which Kurtág himself once described as “diary-like brief documents of my life”. But we can also consider the several dozen longer and shorter movements grouped under the summary title Signs, Games, and Messages, written for different instruments and ensembles, as equally diary-like and infinitely personal records. The six piano movements on the album Aphorisms are uplifting snapshots of György Kurtág’s creative world.In the third book of Játékok, published in 1979, Kurtág included several compositions in honour of his former teacher, Ferenc Farkas. In the piece  Hommage a Farkas Ferenc (2) (Scraps of a colinda melody – faintly recollected), the fragments of melody are from a Christmas song (O, ce veste minunată) well-known in Romania, which Kurtág learned during his school years in Lugoj. Among the movements in Játékok, there are many personal messages and notes (greetings, farewells, commemorations), and among the recipients are the names of friends, family members, fellow musicians, or masters of previous eras. The pieces À la mémoire de Marcel Beccaccia, Farewell ...to my dear friend András Wilheim and Márta’s Ligature were included in Book XII of Játékok (forthcoming). György Kurtág made many transcriptions of works by composers such as Machaut, Purcell, Bach or Mussorgsky, and his recitals with Márta Kurtág were memorable for their exceptional atmosphere.  The recordings of the two Bach movements on the album (the chorale Das alte Jahr vergangen ist and the Largo from the Sonata for solo violin in C major) are deeply moving: György Kurtág now performs the second transcription alone.

Szabolcs Molnár

György Kurtág
Composer, pianist, teacher György Kurtág was born on 19 February, 1926 in Lugoj (Romania). He studied music in Timisoara, his piano teacher was Magda Kardos, and his composition teacher was Max Eisikovits. After the Second World War, he moved to Budapest, where he studied under Pál Kadosa (piano), Leó Weiner (chamber music), Sándor Veress and Ferenc Farkas (composition) at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music. In 1957–1958, he attended the courses of Olivier Messiaen and Darius Milhaud in Paris, but the greatest influence on him was the teachings of the psychologist Marianne Stein. Kurtág started his career in music pedagogy at the Budapest Academy of Music in 1967, and regularly gave chamber music master classes in several countries in Europe, and in the United States. He received many Hungarian and international awards, and regularly performed as a pianist with his wife, Márta Kurtág (1927–2019). His activity as a composer came to international recognition in 1981, when his work Messages of the late Miss R.V. Troussova made him known at once; he received many invitations and commissions, and worked in the most prestigious music centres. His first opera, Fin de partie, based on Samuel Beckett’s drama, was completed in 2017 and was premiered at La Scala in Milan a year later. Since 2015, György Kurtág has been living, composing, and teaching in the building of the Budapest Music Center.

Maria Husmann
Opera singer, director, and singing teacher Maria Husmann joined the Hamburg State Opera at the age of 22, later moving to the Stuttgart State Opera, then working freelance with guest performances at many international opera houses and concert halls, primarily as a specialist in 20th/21st century music in roles such as: Lulu in Lulu by Alban Berg, Marie in Die Soldaten by Bernd Alois Zimmermann; Fräulein in Die Gespenstersonate (Ghost Sonata) by Aribert Reimann; Lucille in Dantons Tod by Gottfried von Einem; Jenny in The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny by Kurt Weill, and Tye from Akhnaten by Philip Glass. She received awards from Opernwelt magazine as the best opera singer of 2004 in Germany and the best opera singer for 20th-century opera in Austria. With her socio-political programmes, she has made guest appearances at many major theatres and international festivals. Musically, she has worked with important composers such as Luciano Berio, George Crumb, Fausto Romitelli, Giorgio Battistelli, Aribert Reimann, Hans Werner Henze, Philip Glass, and Brett Dean. In 2023, she founded the Maria Husmann Foundation to promote new music performed by young singers. For more than 30 years, she has been a close friend of György Kurtág and also the late Márta Kurtág. She has performed Kurtág’s vocal cycles worldwide, including the Four Capriccios at La Scala in Milan. György Kurtág wrote his second opera, Die Stechardin, with a libretto by Christoph Hein, in collaboration with Maria Husmann from 2023 to 2025. The premiere took place on 20 February 2026 in Budapest on the maestro’s 100th birthday. 

Niek de Groot 
Dutch musician Niek de Groot is one of today’s leading classical double bassists. After a ten-year tenure as principal double bass with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, ending in 2005, he has devoted himself to chamber music and solo performance. Since 1996, he has been Senior Professor at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, Germany. He refined his artistry at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada and studied with renowned cellists such as Frans Helmerson and Lluís Claret. Niek de Groot has made numerous critically acclaimed solo recordings for EMI, BIS, Audite, Orlando Records, Kairos and Nimbus. Recent recordings include solo concertos written for him by Sebastian Fagerlund and Anders Nilsson. A passionate advocate of contemporary music, he has significantly expanded the repertoire for his instrument through close collaborations with composers such as Stockhausen, Saariaho, Rihm, Vasks, Gubaidulina and Fagerlund. His long-standing artistic collaboration with György Kurtág began already in 1987. Since 1994, he has worked with singer Maria Husmann and Kurtág on his compositions. Throughout his career, Niek de Groot had the privilege to perform on rare double basses by Cerutti, Bajoni, Candi, Amati, Montagnana, and Degen. His bows are custom-made by Jochen Schmidt.