“Music is a language; it’s like speaking.”

Awarded with the 7th BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Music and Opera, composer György Kurtág reflects in this interview on composing as an essential quest. With his distilled musical language, he speaks about what each note conveys, how expressive intensity can arise from simplicity, and the bond between music, poetry, and life. Kurtág invites us to listen to music as a world unto itself and to recognize, in the smallest gesture, a force capable of evoking the universal.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Contemporary Music category goes in this seventh edition to the Hungarian composer György Kurtág, whose work stands out for its rare expressive intensity. The novel dimension of his music lies in its spirit, the authenticity of its language, and the way it crosses borders between spontaneity and reflection, between formalism and expression