I’ve been meaning for a while to make a video talking about the piece, then I started jotting down ideas and decided to share that. These are some things I imagine and think about as I play it.

The piece, and Kurtág’s music generally, has made its way into the concert repertoire – it’s programmed quite often now, including by students – a sure sign of a piece becoming well-known. Kurtág’s music has a theatrical directness with its Hungarian folkloric style, as in Bartók and Ligeti, and use of musical gestures which we all know from a lot of music.

People sometimes just play some of the mvts of this piece and/or they change the order of the movements. I’ve done that also when I played just a few of them, but I now play it in the order that’s in the printed score. I feel the sequence forms a wonderful dramatic narrative, with contrasts, references and recurring ideas. Grouped together there are the “complaining” mvts, the mvts about sleep, the In Nomine based on an antiphon… I’ve indicated some connections with symbols
( ^ * > etc)

1.
^^Hommage à JSB, calmo, scorrevole
Like Bach dance movements but with 7/16 and 5/16 bars
Implied counterpoint. A single line but you can follow different lines traveling through.
“Scorrevole” is often used for fast hurrying music, but here I think its meaning is “flowing”. So calm and flowing, but not slow.

2.
>>Perpetuum Mobile
“erstarren”: freeze, immobile
B) version because I like the slight tempo changes.

3.
*Klagendes Lied/Vibrato Study
A whining child
Microtones played as vibrato, not finger shifts
Little actual vibrato, the molto espressivo here is in the expression of complaining

leading to…
*4.
Chromatic Quarrel
Child is bugging their parent, parent responds with impatience and anger
Child erupts, “foot stamping”
Adult is stressed with worry (fast triplets with swells) then their final firm response receives another foot stamping tantrum from the kid

5.
^^Hommage to John Cage – Faltering Words
8th-note fragments like in Cage’s Cheap Imitation or 8 Whiskus
Faltering as you try to convey something but you can’t find the next word, so you hesitate.. ..
Cageian chance: what will the next word be?

6.
>>The Carenza Jig
Wild but sweet!
Recalling the Perpetuum mobile’s G-D triplets
Then the sudden biting attacks of “birds of prey”

7.
—Folk Tune
Emphatic, bold, arms held wide
Building from the beginning to end

8.
^^Doloroso
Pale, quiet and quieter, fading
Halting, like the Cage mvt

9.
++In memoriam Laszlo Mensáros
Suddenly, con slancio: with abandon, momentum
Forward thrust and flair, then a quick pull back

10.
>> Postcard to Anna Keller
A playground song
Regular accents (>) vs the wedge accents which are rounder and heavier with a big swing

11.
— In memoriam Blum Támas
simple phrasing in groups of 4 quarters, like a folksong
Pulse the 8ths but some can be more legato

12.
## calmo sognando, Stefan Romascanu in memoriam
He’s falling asleep, nodding off in his armchair
The whole notes in the middle are like deep breathing, snoring, then his head falling forward

13.
++ In Nomine – all’ongherese
Starts with slancio flair and brisk energy
Then some moments of urgency but an overall dissolve into lyricism and calm

14.
## für den, der heimlich lauschet (for those who secretly listen)
sweetly eavesdropping, tiptoeing around
Stefan Romascanu is there in his chair, sleeping and again breathing slowly and deeply

15.
## féerie d’automne
The fairies come out to play while everyone’s sleeping
Fast and free

16.
++Antifona Hirominak
Con slancio swagger, alternating with the scurrying fairies
Last fade into the mist or night or distance

Triste (Sad) was written for the violinist Miranda Cuckson, for whom I have always wanted to write a composition. With her virtuosity, she inspired my expressive explorations in this piece. Throughout the years, I went back and forth, here and there, adding touches to the composition.

Triste originated after the death of Tyler Clementi, a young violinist who took his own life by jumping off the George Washington Bridge after an intense bullying incident for being gay. I began to write Triste several weeks after his death because I couldn’t stop thinking about the tragic way he died and the personal anguish that led him to make such a dramatic decision. I felt I needed to do something to process the impact of such an act of violence. In my mind was also my brother who is a poet and gay, and who like many others has been bullied for who they are.

 In writing this piece, I was calming myself by giving Tyler Clementi this composition, by writing it in his memory.

-Alba Potes

Caressing Words:

Writing a piece for violin is a nice project in itself, but writing it thinking that it is for Miranda adds even more joy. It is thinking music for a great musician and a charming person.

Caressing Words
It is an idea of combination between the musical language with that of literature, making musical objects equivalent to words.

I- From Here to More
An Introduction and the beginning of a good collaboration.

II- Miranda Waltz
I always thought of her with the rhythm of a waltz.

III- Dear Mario
The memory and affection for Mario Davidovsky I did not want him to be
outside of this work, it was through him I met Miranda.

IV- Way of….
a nexus that marks a direction, an intimate piece.

V- Tarantella
Vigorous Italian music that works as fast movement

VI- Open Door
Conclusion inviting to continue making music together

The title Capra refers to the physicist Fritjof Capra and his book The Tao of Physics, as well as to the old Latin name for goat, and to the gusla, the Balkan violin, which is covered with a goat skin and often has a goat-figure head. In 1987 I started a series of violin solo pieces. The first, Capra 1, was inspired by a Nepalese violinist, a guest in Hamburg Musikhochschule. I was completely fascinated by his playing improvising on fixed speech-like patterns, I suppose. This is what I wanted to comment on in Capra 1. My Capra series is both full of spontaneity and full of “rules” of many musics from all over the world. Capra 4 (2013) is now realised in a wonderful manner by Miranda Cuckson. In an additional title it is called Zahlentanz – Dance of numbers. – Manfred Stahnke

Movements:
I. Reine Terzen und Sexten
II. Reine Quarten und Quinten – und Sekunden 9/8
III. Reine kleine Septen 7/4 und Quarten
IV. Oktaven und 8/7 Sekunden
V. 11/10 Sekunden und Quinten: Semantic Signalling
VI. Quarten 21/16, selten Sekunden 8/7 und Sexten 12/7
VII. Naturtonreihen