
Today’s Advent Calendar piece is one of the shortest works i’ve ever written about. Circumdederunt… in memoriam Rita Wagner by György Kurtág commemorates the Hungarian pianist who died in 2021. Back in 2019, my esteemed blogospherical colleague David Nice mentioned that, after attending a masterclass with Wagner, he had “probably learnt more about Beethoven in 45 minutes … than I have in the past two decades”. With her husband Ferenc Rados, Wagner taught at the Liszt Academy in Budapest, and following her death the head of the Academy’s chamber music department, Balázs Fülei, said of her impact: “Together with hundreds of her students, we all feel that in her lessons she lit a fire within us. And we took that fire and have kept it burning. Because Rita Wagner was also our energy bomb. This flame is unquenchable and will live in us forever.”
Kurtág evidently felt similarly strongly about her passing, though his miniature piece Circumdederunt is, even for him, an exercise in absolute understatement. The title and music reference the eponymous Latin antiphon, adapted from words from the Psalms: “Circumdederunt me gemitus mortis, dolores inferni circumdederunt me: et in tribulatione mea invocavi Dominum, exaudivit de templo sancto suo vocem meam.” (The groans of death surrounded me, the sorrows of the abyss encompassed me: and in my distress I called upon the Lord, and from His holy temple He heard my voice.)

Kurtág gives the plainchant melody to the cello which, for the most part, articulates it simply and solemnly. The exception comes at the phrase “et in tribulatione mea” (and in my distress), where the cello is almost shockingly intensified. Its tone is abruptly heightened and strained, pitch is distorted, the bowing tremulous, forced, shaken. It’s a powerful intrusion of personal emotion into an otherwise sombre act of expression, and it makes all the difference. Even when the cello regains its composure, those fraught few seconds leave a lasting impact; the surface may be smooth again, but we’re acutely aware of the enormity of the turmoil underneath.
The world première of Circumdederunt… in memoriam Rita Wagner was given by Steven Isserlis at the Wigmore Hall in November 2022.