Pierre-Laurent Aimard plays Kurtág’s Játékok

György Kurtág – Játékok (Games)
Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano
Label: Pentatone
🔗 Pentatone
Duration: 2 CDs
📀 Also available for streaming on major platforms

By Damián Autorino
Editor at Moto Perpetuo

In one of the most significant classical releases of the year, Pierre-Laurent Aimard offers a deeply personal and meticulously curated selection from György Kurtág’s Játékok, a series of miniature piano pieces spanning five decades. Chosen and recorded under the composer’s close supervision, these 81 works — drawn from ten published volumes — form a kind of musical diary: at once playful, fragile, severe, and intimate

Kurtág, now approaching a century in age, remains one of the most revered living composers, and Játékok stands as one of the major creative achievements of recent decades. In Aimard’s hands, this collection becomes a spiritual and artistic testament — revealing not only Kurtág’s musical language, but something of his inner life. The playing is crystalline, thoughtful, and profoundly human.

This recording also comes in a particularly rich year for Kurtág’s legacy on disc. We previously highlighted another exceptional release: Lines of Life, Schubert & Kurtág with Benjamin Appl, James Baillieu, and Kurtág himself, which you can revisit here. Together, these albums provide a rare and moving portrait of one of contemporary music’s most essential voices.