Kurtág's Játékok: An Exploration in Three Breaths
Pierre-Laurent Aimard plays Kurtág's Játékok across three separately ticketed hours at Wigmore Hall on Saturday 19 September 2026, at 11.30am, 5pm and 9pm.
Pierre-Laurent Aimard gives Saturday 19 September 2026 over to a single body of work at Wigmore Hall. Kurtág’s Játékok is a sequence of miniatures ordered into books rather than a piece with a fixed shape, and Aimard divides a selection of them across three separately ticketed hours: half past eleven in the morning, five o’clock, and nine at night.
Each hour is sold on its own at £25 and runs for about an hour without an interval, so the day can be taken whole or in part. Lorenzo Soulès joins for the first. Bach and Beethoven appear inside the sequence rather than around it — two Bach chorale preludes in Kurtág’s own transcription in the morning, a late Beethoven bagatelle in the afternoon.
The books thin out as the day goes on. By the nine o’clock the music is almost entirely dedications: birthdays, medals, letters, and pieces written in memory of named friends.
First Breath
Wigmore Hall · Marylebone
Pierre-Laurent Aimard is joined by Lorenzo Soulès at half past eleven in the morning for Books I, II and III of the Játékok, opening on the earliest and lightest of them — 'Bored', 'Let's be silly', 'Toddling', 'The Bunny and the Fox'. Two Bach chorale preludes in Kurtág's own transcription sit between the books, alongside the 8 Piano Pieces Op. 3. An hour, no interval. It is the only one of the three hours played four-handed.
Second Breath
Wigmore Hall · Marylebone
Aimard plays alone at five o'clock, taking Book VI and the Versetti — Abraham, Cain, the Deluge, 'Waiting for Noah'. Beethoven's Bagatelle in B minor Op. 126 No. 4 is set among them, and the Kurtág 'Les Adieux' arrives in Janáček's manner. An hour, no interval, tickets at £25.
Third Breath
Wigmore Hall · Marylebone
The last hour begins at nine in the evening with Book IX, which is largely dedications — birthday pieces, medals, letters, memorials to friends. Aimard plays it solo, an hour without an interval, at £25. Nothing else is programmed in the hall that day beyond the three breaths.