Heinz Holliger

Zwiegespräche (dialogues) is a double portrait of two composers who have been friends for decades, Heinz Holliger and György Kurtág. Released for Holliger's 80th birthday in May 2019, it interleaves more than thirty miniatures, nearly all with oboe or cor anglais. "We compose the same way," Kurtág told Holliger on hearing the recording. Both studied with Sándor Veress, both write dedications to friends into their music, and both love the very short form.

Holliger plays oboe and cor anglais throughout, and in one piece the piano. He is joined by his pupil Marie-Lise Schüpbach on oboe and cor anglais, the soprano Sarah Wegener and Ernesto Molinari on bass and contrabass clarinet. The music was recorded in June 2018 at Radiostudio DRS in Zürich, with Andreas Werner as engineer and Manfred Eicher as executive producer. The poet Philippe Jaccottet was recorded separately in August 2017 in Grignan.

The album opens with Kurtág's ...Ein Brief aus der Ferne an Ursula for solo oboe, written in 2014 shortly before the death of Holliger's wife. It is followed by his ...für Heinz... for piano left hand. At the centre stands Holliger's Lecture pour hautbois et cor anglais (2015/16): seven short instrumental pieces on poems from Jaccottet's Airs, each preceded by the poet reading his own lines. Kurtág's memorials for friends follow, among them Kroó György in memoriam for solo contrabass clarinet. The disc closes with Holliger's Sonata for solo oboe, written in 1956/57 for Veress's class, revised in 1999 and recorded here for the first time.

In The Guardian Andrew Clements called the album "a marvellously austere birthday tribute". He added that Holliger's "oboe playing has lost none of its authority and peerless musicianship". For Arnold Whittall in Gramophone it was "a beautifully rounded double portrait", and he pointed to Kurtág's ...(Hommage à Tristan), which compresses Wagner into some forty seconds for cor anglais and bass clarinet. Several reviewers remarked how naturally the pieces answer one another, as when both composers set the same couplet by Angelus Silesius, Die Ros', one after the other.

CD edition, ECM New Series 2665, first released in May 2019, with liner notes by Roman Brotbeck and ink drawings by Kurtág.