Kafka Fragments

György Kurtág’s “Kafka-Fragments” (1985-87) for soprano and violin, op. 24, is an hour in length, which makes it one of the composer’s longest works. It is comprised of 40 compositions of between a few seconds and seven minutes in duration

Based on extracts from Franz Kafka’s journals and letters, the work is not a conventional song cycle, though it could be described as such. Rather, it is a quest in search of the whole in the fragment, the macrocosm in the microcosm, the infinite in the delimited and vice versa

“Composition has its own rules. It’s what the composition, not the composer, wants that happens”, Kurtág explains. Which is why "Kafka-Fragments", though written as a purely concert piece, has been performed so often on stage: it must have demanded a theatrical existence. At the Onassis Stegi, this masterly work will be accompanied by a minimal stage performance based on Kafka’s style and writings.