KIRCHKLANG 2026 - The sound of silence - Bach & Kurtág BACH AM ATTERSEE - On the 100th birthday of György Kurtág

From the sound of silence - Bach & Kurtág
BACH AM ATTERSEE - On the 100th birthday of György Kurtág

Sunday, August 9, 2026, 7.00 pm
Nussdorf am Attersee parish church

This evening's program juxtaposes two composers who search for the very essence of musical expression in very different ways: Johann Sebastian Bach and György Kurtág. In the Nußdorf am Attersee parish church, a concentrated sound space is created in which baroque formal rigor and modern reduction mirror each other.

Bach's music forms the starting point: in arrangements and transformations that carry his contrapuntal spirit into the Romantic period and beyond. Kurtág's short, often aphoristic pieces from Játékok and his Bach arrangements respond to this with extreme condensation - music of great intensity that gains existential tension from just a few notes. Franz Liszt's monumental Prelude and Fugue on B-A-C-H and the large-scale arrangement by Max Reger bridge the gap between Baroque structure, Romantic sonority and modern reflection.

The evening will be performed by pianist Michael Schöch, who will interpret the majority of the program as a soloist. He is internationally active as a pianist and organist and was awarded 1st prize at the ARD International Music Competition (organ) in 2011. His dual profile as organist and pianist also characterizes his programs, in which he regularly devotes himself to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and its continued effects into the 19th and 20th centuries.

In the works by György Kurtág, he is joined by Keiko Hattori : together they perform these pieces four-handed on one piano. Attersee-based pianist Keiko Hattori studied piano at the Mozarteum Salzburg in the class of Karl-Heinz Kämmerling and regularly performs in chamber music projects.

This evening will be a musical approach to the essentials: to silence, concentration and those sound spaces in which music is not loud, but has a profound effect.

-Programme-
Johann Sebastian BACH / Max REGER: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565
György KURTÁG: Bach arrangements and pieces from Játékok
Franz LISZT: Prelude and Fugue on B-A-C-H, p. 260
György KURTÁG: Bach arrangements and pieces from Játékok
Max REGER / August STRADAL: Fantasy and Fugue on B-A-C-H, op. 46 (arrangement for piano)

-Instrumentation
Michael Schöch, piano
Keiko Hattori, piano