Treasury György Kurtág on 16 February - the perfect prelude to the Kurtág Festival

In the series Treasury Asko|Schönberg will take you on a journey to the pearls of 20th-century music through live-played music, engaging guest speakers and visual and sound clips.

Thursday's edition of Treasury 16 February highlights the extraordinary world of György Kurtág (1926), the Hungarian composer known as the master of miniatures. His pieces consist of short, highly expressive and intense fragments, each evoking a world full of details with great eloquence.

Asko|Schönberg has worked intensively with Hungarian composer György Kurtág for decades and has developed great expertise in performing his work. The album of Kurtág's complete ensemble works, a historical document on which the ensemble worked for years with Reinbert de Leeuw, has received worldwide acclaim and was awarded an Edison Klassiek and nominated for a Grammy Award.

The musicians of Asko|Schönberg will play various compositions by Kurtág and composers who inspired him. Singer Gerrie de Vries performs What's the Word, an important piece in Kurtág's oeuvre. However, after the singer he had written it for died, he considered it unplayable, as he found no one capable of performing it as he intended. Until Reinbert de Leeuw showed him a recording with Gerrie de Vries; Kurtág was immediately convinced.

De Vries will also be interviewed, as will Renee Jonker, who developed a close relationship with Kurtág. As a percussionist with various ensembles, he worked with him a lot and in the late 1990s organised a two-year stay in the Netherlands. From this, a long-term friendship developed.

This Treasury György Kurtág forms the perfect warm-up for the Muziekgebouw's Kurtág Festival from 7 to 11 March. This includes two concerts with Asko|Schönberg:

...quasi una fantasia... on 8 March, grand opening concert with top soloists Tamara Stefanovich piano and Jean-Guihen Queyras cello.

Kurtág's vocal key works on 10 March, with several soloists including Gerrie de Vries and Pierre-Laurent Aimard piano.