The chairman of the Royal Philharmonic Society, John Gilhooly, described the concert given by György and Márta Kurtág in London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall on 1 December as a significant event in music history. In the first half of the recital Hiromi Kikuchi performed the eight-movement Hipartita for solo violin, which the composer had dedicated to the musician. After the interval, György and Márta Kurtág played a selection of solo and four-handed pieces from Games and Kurtág’s Bach transcriptions. Compositions which had originally been written as a homage, gift or message in sounds to colleagues and friends featured significantly in the ‘composed ’ programme that was performed without intermission. The Kurtágs played on an upright piano with the ‘quiet’ pedal always depressed. The instrument’s sound was amplified only to the extent that in the jam-packed hall accommodating 900 people everyone would feel the intensity of the soft sounds and could enter the magic world revealed by the playing of the two exceptional musicians. Their performance and the encore, a four-handed Schumann piece, received a standing ovation.

At the end of the concert György Kurtág was presented with the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society, its highest honour which has been awarded to the most significant composers and performers of the music world for 143 years, ever since the centenary of Beethoven’s birth. From the time the society was founded contemporary music has been given distinguished attention, due to which numerous significant works were commissioned by the RPS, including Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. Earlier gold medallists include Brahms, Britten, Sibelius, Walton, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Richard Strauss, Stravinsky, Messiaen, Lutosławski and György Ligeti. On receiving the medal, Kurtág responded with music after some brief words of thanks for the award. He and Márta played Mozart’s four-handed Variations in G major (K. 501) which the audience again received with an ovation.