For György Kurtág's 90th Birthday: Petite musique solennelle en hommage à Pierre Boulez 90

Premiered last year at Lucerne, this short piece, as stark, as clear, as concise, as monumental, as anything I know from its composer was intended, as its title makes clear, as a homage to the composer whose death remains and will remain the greatest of our musical losses in 2016. Webern stands, if anything, more closely and yet also more ambiguously behind the honour than the honoured. The post-war generation's work is far from done.

Wishing Maurizio Pollini a very happy 70th birthday

To read about an unforgettable series of five concerts last year, ranging from Bach to Boulez and Stockhausen, click here. And for a more or less contemporaneous (to the Lucerne recording) performance of the Appassionata and three other Beethoven sonatas, click here.