Marvelous, haunting piece by Mark Swed about the Hungarian master. Mark was at the Kurtág duo recital that I wrote about recently in The New Yorker; he has an uncanny ability to show up at any out-of-the-way event that I think I'm covering exclusively. If I hear about, say, a hitherto unknown Malaysian composer, a ninety-year-old woman who has written a ten-hour-long piano sonata on toilet paper, and I trek for days to her premiere in a muddy fishing village, Mark will inevitably be there, saying, "Oh, you heard about Ayu too?" But it's always good to see him; it means I've made a smart choice.
