Meeting ‘Uncle Yuri’, as György Kurtág is affectionately called throughout Hungary, has been one of the greatest gifts of my life.

In May 2019, I met one of the most outstanding composers of our generation in person for the first time at his home in Budapest. The Konzerthaus Dortmund wanted to organise a Kurtág Festival and the composer requested that his Hölderlin Songs for baritone be part of it.

The Concert Hall had sent recordings of 10 baritones to Kurtág in Budapest, and after several weeks he reduced the list down to three. After doing another recording for him, I was finally chosen. I had heard from others that Kurtág could be very demanding: it is of the upmost importance for him that the artist understands what he wants and be prepared to implement every detail to meet his strict requirements. My first encounter with him was very tense and after only a brief introduction, I was asked to sing the entire song cycle to him immediately. After half an hour, his wife Márta said something to him in Hungarian, and he then turned to me and said: ‘Márta says you are our man’!

‘You will suffer a lot,’ he told me. This comment was made right at the beginning of our first rehearsal, but what followed was not suffering. It was often challenging, but over the years a wonderful friendship developed with this brilliant man almost 60 years my senior.

Benjamin Appl with György Kurtág (photo: Balint Hrotko)

Since that meeting, I have travelled to Budapest every few months to work with him on this music. These six (mostly unaccompanied) songs are the ultimate challenge for any singer, and Kurtág himself describes them as ‘devilishly difficult’. We often work on one bar for hours, and he interrupts me as I take a breath before I have even started to sing.

Kurtág is an eternal questioner, a seeker, a person like no other in our music world. We are all constantly looking for answers in our lives but often do not find them. Kurtág has helped me find ways to ask different questions, which then lead me on the path to possible answers.

He comes from a generation in which money, unions, schedules, and restrictions played no role. In our industry, everything is becoming ever faster and more tightly planned, with fewer rehearsals scheduled, but he simply doesn’t entertain this. How much something costs, how many days of recording are available is irrelevant – it is only about the music, the text, the art. It is about more than just singing the right notes and finding the right expression; it is an exploration. In conversation he will mention a quote from Pushkin or talk about French painting. Our dialogue is a philosophical, artistic collaboration that is always fruitful and enriching. Constant questioning and reevaluating are what makes this artistic interaction so special.

The smallest score markings when composing his works, which he constantly looks at and revises, even decades later, cost him a great deal of energy. Watching him is a powerful testimony to how a person struggles internally to make the right artistic decisions, which are then revised a thousand times. It is like a long-suffering Orpheus turning over in hell to get confirmation. This drove him into a self-destructive conflict in the 1950s, and only professional help enabled Kurtág to live and compose again.

Márta was not only his muse, but also his guide. Sometimes a strict reviser, but mostly a kind supporter, she urged him to approve the works and release them for publication. Since her death in October 2019, after 72 years of marriage, he will often sit in silence in front of his score and wait for Márta’s assessment. He tries to listen to himself to find the answer. But there is only silence.

Kurtág firmly believes that a composition follows its own rules and only bears fruit when what the composition commands happens and not what the composer wants. His compositions never put up with anything from his own ego and the music only comes into being in the moments when it wants to come to life itself. Just when he knew exactly how he wanted something to be written, the music thwarted his plans and the composition was abandoned.

When I ask him whether I should sing something this way or that way, he says: ‘I don’t know’. And today might be different from tomorrow. That can make a performing artist despair! But we have been working on these Hölderlin songs for five years now, and Kurtág’s presence enables me to access this music on a deeper level. I find the texts by Hölderlin difficult to understand fully.

When we worked on one particular piece in the cycle that I was struggling with, I asked Kurtág for some help to get deeper into the meaning of the poem. He told me that he had to put the text into music to understand it better. I found this a fascinating approach: an artist creating something to understand better the art of another more deeply. He often explains harmonic connections to me by laying Schubert harmonies under some seemingly random a cappella singing, and suddenly everything makes sense.

After years of working together, we started to study songs by Brahms and Schubert: songs that hugely influenced Kurtág when writing the Hölderlin songs and works that he and his wife had played together for decades. There were many moments during the rehearsals when Kurtág picked up his pen and either revised unpublished pieces or wrote new works – inspired by the work we had done together. Kurtág’s published oeuvre is limited, so I am thrilled that my new album of his music has seven new world premiere recordings on it. The influence of Gregorian chant is clearly audible in his music, which is why the album opens with a new work by Kurtág, with a madrigal intervention in Gregorian chant. I am particularly pleased that the composer himself is sitting at the piano and accompanying me on a Schubert and a Brahms song.

The recording process was the most intense experience of my life. We had four recording periods over 15 days and recorded more than 1,500 takes. Kurtág was present the whole time, which added a constant pressure, with me trying to meet the demands of Schubert, Goethe and Kurtág – Uncle George.

Kurtág is not a man of many words. He chooses his words carefully, and often pauses for thought, in the belief that less is often more. This concentration is also reflected in his short, intense compositions, which often open up entire universes.

The encounters with György Kurtág and his wife Márta were unique, the likes of which one rarely gets to experience. Kurtág unveiled the true meaning of being a musician to me through his intensive engagement with music and showed me a greater understanding of human existence. I thank him for that with all my heart. ON

Lines of Life will be released on Alpha Classics on 14 February

This article originally appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of Opera Now. Never miss an issue – subscribe today