Kafka Fragments (1986) is the largest of György Kurtág’s song-cycles, and typical of this most inscrutable yet communicative living composer. It has been well served on disc, Tony Arnold up against the confiding intimacy of Anu Komsi and intense poise of Juliane Banse. Interesting that Bridge should have juxtaposed studio and live performances. The CD account is notably faithful to the score, with the one proviso that the music’s startling invention is more evident than its painstaking cohesion. Whether it was the live ambience or an additional two years, the DVD account secures this unity such that the work now lives and breathes in real time. Its emotional apex comes in the single setting of Part 2, “The True Path”, which is the still centre of Kafka’s and Kurtág’s expressive universe. The much shorter items on either side anticipate then reflect it with their sense of the surreal in the everyday, before the final eight numbers wryly reconfigure previous events – culminating in “The moonlit night dazzled us” with its aura of bleak transcendence.

Certainly those who have the earlier recordings should also acquire this set, where Arnold’s contribution is enhanced by capricious and plangent playing from Movses Pogossian. Sound on both formats is fine, with the live performance readily gaining from the sobriety of the camerawork. The DVD features 15 minutes of a masterclass that highlights Kurtág’s famously intensive coaching – as exacting as is his music, and with a similar outcome in that no one encountering it could remain unmoved.