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László Sáry’s music has always revealed its intimate, deeply personal character to me. One could even say it had always lived in a small place within me. When I first met László in Prague and later in Budapest in 1998, I had the strong impression of recognizing something familiar and overwhelming in his music. For this reason I decided to record this CD in my house, in Rome, alone.

For months I worked at night to edit and mix what I was recording. It was as if I had decided to pay my personal tribute of gratitude to an artist I hold in the highest regard, and in the process I feel I have become more natural: it has been a small, innocent domestic ritual.

I would like to thank Alda Caiello and Salvatore Carchiolo for their valuable contributions and I dedicate this work to my wife Paola and to my son Ariele, who tolerated my nocturnal anxieties for so long.

Manuel Zurria


Though we had met many times before, I first heard Manuel Zurria play in Rome, where he premiered several of my pieces with the new music ensemble Alter Ego. His outstanding quality as a performer was apparent both as a soloist and a chamber musician. I have kept the recordings of my compositions played at that concert, and I consider them to be the best performances.

A few years ago, Manuel set out on a unique project. He decided to record, on his own, in his own studio, my composition for flutes and other chamber groups of unspecified instrumentation. These pieces present a great challenge to the performer, both musically and in terms of instrumental technique.

Listening to the recordings, I think that the result – thanks to Manuel Zurria’s superior knowledge of the instruments, and his creative imagination – is simply marvellous. It has provided me and, I hope, the public at large, with an exceptional experience, and great pleasure.

László Sáry
Translated by Richard Robinson

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László Sáry

was born in 1940 in Győr. In 1966 he graduated in composition from the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music, where his teacher was Endre Szervánszky. In 1970, together with Zoltán Jeney, László Vidovszky, Péter Eötvös, Albert Simon, and Zoltán Kocsis, he founded the New Music Studio, in which he participated as both composer and performer. In 1972 on his visit to Darmstadt he came across the music and ideas of Christian Wolff. This meeting reinforced his interest in ways of composing differing from traditional European practice.

From the mid-1970s he began to develop the special “Sáry method”, known as Creative music activities, which deals with the basic elements of new musical thinking. It gives guidance in getting to know certain compositional methods, and provides help in developing memory and improvisation skills, in focussing concentration, and in practising joint music-making. Several times a year he holds accredited courses for teachers, music teachers and students at the Academy of Music. He has given many courses in Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium and Estonia.

In 1979 he was awarded the Kassák Prize. In 1985 he received the Erkel Prize. Since 1990 he has been the musical director of the Katona Theatre, Budapest. In the same year he started teaching at the University of Theatre and Film, where he introduced a new subject, Creative music activities. In 1993 he was awarded the Bartók-Pásztory Prize.

Since 1994 he has participated in the MUSE project (Music, source of balance and tolerance), which is an educational method for children from disadvantaged backgrounds based on music, singing, dance and body movement. In 1996 he spent three months in Tokyo on a scholarship from the Japan Foundation, where he studied traditional Japanese theatre, music and dance. In 1998 his work Etudes for steam locomotives won a prize at the Seventh International Rostrum of Electroacoustic Music in Vienna. Since 1998 he has been a member of the Széchenyi Academy of Letters and Arts. In 1999 the book of methodology, Creative music activities was published in Hungarian and English, and in 2006 in German too. In 2000 he was awarded the Artist of Merit Prize, and in 2008 was decorated as Outstanding Artist.


Manuel Zurria

was born in Sicily in 1962 and has lived in Rome since 1980. He has worked and collaborated with some of the most important Italian composers such as Francesco Pennisi, Adriano Guarnieri, Sylvano Bussotti, Aldo Clementi, Franco Donatoni, Luca Francesconi and Salvatore Sciarrino. Recently he has worked with Philip Glass, Terry Riley, Gavin Bryars, Giya Kancheli, Kaija Saariaho, Toshio Hosokawa, Alvin Curran and Frederic Rzewski on portrait concerts. A whole generation of young composers was pushed to create new works through his urge to develop new solutions in instrumental research.

Strongly attracted by minimalism, at the beginning of 2008 a triple CD entitled Repeat! – released by the Italian label Die Schachtel – shows the result of the experiments that he has carried out in the last few years, and includes original and transcribed pieces for flute in collaboration with musicians such as Arvo Pärt, Alvin Lucier, Louis Andriessen, Tom Johnson and many others. The album received outstandingly positive feedback from the international press.

Zurria has been invited to international festivals of contemporary music like the Venice Music Biennale, Pacific Music Festival – Sapporo (Japan), Festival Musica Strasbourg, Beethovenhalle – Bonn, Settembre Musica – Torino, De Yisbreker – Amsterdam, IRCAM – Festival Agorŕ – Paris, Festival d’Automne – Paris, Rikskonserter – Stockholm, Illkhom Theatre (Tashkent, Uzbekistan), Takefu Festival (Japan), Akademie der Künste – Berlin, Maerz Musik – Berlin, Festival Archipel – Geneva, Numus – Aarhus, Ultima – Oslo, Ensem – Valencia, Wien Modern, and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. He recently started a prolific partnership with Philip Corner. In 1990 he was among the founders of Alter Ego, one of the most versatile new music groups of today. His discography includes recordings for BMG-Ricordi, Capstone Records, EdiPan, Stradivarius, Die Schachtel and Touch.