Klaas de Vries and György Kurtág, two soulmates

This concert is a co-production with Société Gavigniès, which made the realisation of this concert possible, and takes place during Festival Dag in de Branding, which celebrates Klaas de Vries from March 21 to 23.

Two Lifetimes of Music

Klaas de Vries (80) and György Kurtág (99) share a combined creative life spanning roughly 140 years. The body of work they have composed over these decades is awe-inspiring: diverse, groundbreaking, profound, beautiful, and pioneering. In three parts, a selection of specialised musicians pays tribute to their work. Pianist Ellen Corver plays a central role in the programme. She has worked closely with luminaries such as Karlheinz Stockhausen and György Ligeti. She has maintained a close relationship with Kurtág for many years. Klaas de Vries wrote his piano concerto especially for her; it will be performed in this concert in its version with sextet.

The first part is dedicated to Kurtág, focusing on his connection to the Netherlands. From 1996 to 1998 he lived in Amsterdam with his wife Márta, inspiring many musicians through his presence and teaching at conservatoires. René van Munster opens the programme with two hushed pieces for solo cello. Ellen Corver plays selections from Kurtág’s piano cycle Játékok. The part concludes with the premiere of the completed version of Klaas de Vries’ Hölderlin Songs.

The second part combines early works by De Vries and Kurtág (from 1961 and 1943 respectively, written when they were 17 and 16). Jelmer de Moed plays the impressive solo for alto clarinet from De Vries’ opera A King, Riding. Finally, Gerrie de Vries, Klaas’s wife, performs Kurtág’s Beckett setting What is the Word. To put it mildly, Kurtág is extremely precise about the performance of his music, and for years he considered no singer capable of performing What is the Word. This changed when he heard a smartphone recording of Gerrie de Vries. Since then, it has become one of her signature pieces.

The third part features the piano concerto that De Vries composed in 1998, in its revised 2003 version. The programme also includes a short documentary, with film footage of De Vries and Kurtág from 1998 and 2025.