“Susan instinctively imbues the work with the widely varied moods of anguish, longing and rage alongside humor, absurdity and ecstasy that the texts convey.” 

"Paul Griffiths has called Kafka Fragments a successor to Winterreise, not least because so much of the chosen texts are to do with journeying. I agree with that and would go further. Fine performances of the Schubert and Kafka cycles both have a transformative effect on the listener and that’s exactly what I have felt on repeated listening to this very fine performance."

★★★★★: One of the finest performances of a classic modern song cycle available

“Inspired performances … Susan Narucki and Curtis Macomber take the wild Kafka Fragments in their stride … sung with pleading sweetness … the beauty of a visual image unlocks an answering musical beauty from Macomber’s violin.” 

★★★★★ Vocal Choice / Michael Church / BBC Music Magazine

“Fine performances of the Schubert and Kafka cycles both have a transformative effect on the listener and that’s exactly what I have felt on repeated listening to this very fine performance.”
Five stars: One of the finest performances of a classic modern song cycle available
-Dominic Hartley / Fanfare

“Narucki and Macomber are equally spellbinding and equally superb...[they] bring a Schoenbergian lant to the Kafka Fragments that is most convincing. This is an infinitely satisfying recording that stands firmly among the top recommendations...”
Five stars: Kurtág’s music matters; Narucki and Macomber birth yet another superb Kafka Fragments
-Colin Clarke / Fanfare

KURTÁG Kafka Fragments (Susan Narucki)
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Author: Richard Whitehouse

Its UK premiere at the 1988 Almeida Festival (organised by the late Pierre Audi) confirmed Kafka Fragments (1985 86) among György Kurtág’s most important pieces and one of a handful of works that defined European music in the later 20th century. Almost four decades and some half a dozen recordings on, that conviction has only been reaffirmed.

Her collection ‘The Edge of Silence’ (12/19) confirmed Susan Narucki as a Kurtág exponent to reckon with, and her take on the present work leaves no doubt as to her identity with his music. One of its chief assets is her ability to render these 40 settings as an unbroken while cumulative entity, knitting together those disjunctive epigrams of its first part as deftly as she does the ensuing items, not necessarily longer in duration but more developed in syntax. She is ably abetted by Curtis Macomber, much more than an accompanist in the way that his violin shadows but also interacts with the voice such that one becomes the projection of the other. Such extended numbers as ‘Der wahre Weg’ (its ‘message’ to Pierre Boulez an oblique fable of disillusion), which occupies the second part, or those ending the third and fourth parts are akin to scenas of operatic import – not least ‘Es blendete uns die Mondnacht’, in which the protagonists become as snakes as they traverse the nocturnal landscape in a starkly fatalistic leave-taking.

Kafka Fragments encourages varied interpretations: the confiding intimacy of Anu Komsi with Sakari Oramo, folk-inflected astringency of Juliane Banse with András Keller, plangent expressivity of Tony Arnold with Movses Pogossian or, most recently, the visceral immediacy of Caroline Melzer with Nurit Stark. Those who possess any of these need not rush to acquire this newcomer, whose manifold subtleties and insights might yet make it the preferred option.

AV2760. KURTÁG Kafka Fragments
KURTÁG Kafka Fragments
Kafka Fragments

GRAMMY®

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“Inspired performances … Susan Narucki and Curtis Macomber take the wild Kafka Fragments in their stride … sung with pleading sweetness … the beauty of a visual image unlocks an answering musical beauty from Macomber’s violin”. – ★★★★★ Vocal Choice, Michael Church, BBC Music Magazine

“Narucki is a Kurtág exponent to reckon with … Curtis Macomber, much more than an accompanist in the way that his violin shadows but also interacts with the voice such that it becomes the projection of the other… Kafka Fragments encourages varied interpretations … this newcomer, whose manifold subtleties and insights might yet make it the preferred option”. – Richard Whitehouse, Gramophone

“Whether singing, speaking, shrieking, or whispering, she totally inhabits Kurtag’s Kafkaesque world. Violinist Curtis Macomber is her equal, his violin displaying the full range of the instrument’s capabilities … The detailed, eloquent notes are by Narucki. She writes as well as she sings, which is really saying something.” - Sullivan, American Record Guide

“Soprano Susan Narucki and violinist Curtis Macomber have performed the work together for some time, and they are quite sensitive to the roles played by the two parts… these are fascinating works if one lets oneself go down the rabbit hole, and it is likely that Narucki and Macomber’s performances will make listeners do just that.” ★★★★½ - James Manheim, AllMusic.com

"GRAMMY® Award-winning American soprano Susan Narucki is one of today’s most committed advocates of the music of our time...Susan instinctively imbues the work with the widely varied moods of anguish, longing and rage alongside humor, absurdity and ecstasy that the texts convey...Joining Susan is one of today’s foremost interpreters of contemporary classical music, violinist Curtis Macomber. Together they prove to be the perfect proponents of Kurtág’s idiosyncratic fusion of poetry and music...a mighty fine performance and well-sculpted audio recording."

“Susan Narucki and Curtis Macomber are superb advocates for Kafka Fragments...Narucki performs Kafka Fragments with breathtaking technical mastery, riveting dramatic involvement, and a voice that is rich, powerful, and tonally attractive. Curtis Macomber is a force of nature in his traversal of Kurtág’s supremely demanding score. And Narucki and Macomber’s interpretation reflects their extensive and rewarding experience as collaborators...A triumphant realization of Kurtág’s extraordinary creation."

Five stars: riveting Kafka Fragments, brilliantly performed by Susan Narucki and Curtis Macomber

Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments is one of the composer’s longest works, running almost 55 minutes in the new recording by Susan Narucki and Curtis Macomber...Kafka Fragments stands as a kind of multimedia event, as if its musical elements are not in themselves sufficient to put across Kurtág’s concept: the score contains specific instructions for visual things the musicians are supposed to do during the performance...[it] is not a literary compilation but an assemblage of texts from Franz Kafka’s diaries, letters and notebooks...Macomber’s participatory intensity is notable in making this performance a true partnership, as is evident from the very start...Narucki handles the vocal demands of the music very skillfully, nicely contrasting the pieces built on overtly trivial observations with those of an existential bent, having no apparent difficulty with the occasional folksong-like elements or the more-frequent leaps, yelps and Sprechstimme. Ultimately, Kafka Fragments is a study in extremes both of music and of meaning, with brief periods of ethereality contrasted with equally brief ones of dramatic emphasis...a work that is amenable to a great variety of successful interpretations whose effect depends on the singer’s vocal flexibility and tonal richness, and on the violinist’s emotive intensity and willingness to stride into the foreground at some times while subsiding into more-traditional accompaniment at others...[This is] modern vocal music delivered with uncompromising intensity..." 

“Whether singing, speaking, shrieking, or whispering, she totally inhabits Kurtág’s Kafkaesque world. Violinist Curtis Macomber is her equal, his violin displaying the full range of the instrument’s capabilities…The detailed, eloquent notes are by Narucki. She writes as well as she sings, which is really saying something.” 

This Island is extraordinarily well curated. One hopes it will engender further treasure hunts for forgotten female composers. Furthermore, the program eminently suits Narucki and Berman, both in terms of taste and temperament. It is one of the best recordings I have heard thus far in 2023.

"Her collection The Edge of Silence (12/19) confirmed Susan Narucki as a Kurtág exponent to reckon with, and her take on the present work [Kafka Fragments] leaves no doubt as to her identity with his music. One of its chief assets is her ability to render these 40 settings as an unbroken while cumulative entity, knitting together those disjunctive epigrams of its first part as deftly as she does the ensuing items, not necessarily longer in duration but more developed in syntax. She is ably abetted by Curtis Macomber, much more than an accompanist in the way that his violin shadows but also interacts with the voice such that one becomes the projection of the other."

-Richard Whitehouse / Gramophone

"This Island began as a literary odyssey by soprano Susan Narucki, yielding significant musical discoveries in songs by mostly unknown female composers from the first half of the 20th century...These were serious composers...'Vous m'avez dit, tel soir, des paroles si belles' is set by Irène Fuerison (1875-1931)...Her songs are a significant find, with an emotional and harmonic range that suggests Hugo Wolf meeting Debussy...this album may well prompt a continued exploration of deeply literate composers who need not be lost and have much to offer the current generation of listeners." 

“[Narucki] is fantastic...she is up with the best...Curtis Macomber...is masterful.”

Five stars: Superb performance of a major 20th century work

"The soprano Susan Narucki has been an unflinching champion of a huge range of contemporary music from both sides of the Atlantic for more than 30 years."

"[The Kurtág works on this disk are] music that demands the most scrupulous attention to detail...her performances convey that sense of having overlooked nothing, while always preserving the expressive freedom and intensity that are such a vital part of Kurtág's writing..."

"Narucki's wonderfully subtle shading and control registers each twist and turn in the journeys of every one of these songs. The instrumentalists are equally acute and alert."

"The whole disc provides total immersion in Kurtág's utterly distinctive world, one in which nothing is taken for granted and even the smallest detail is conferred with profound, totally compelling meaning."

"Soprano Susan Narucki and violinist Curtis Macomber have performed the work together for some time, and they are quite sensitive to the roles played by the two parts… these are fascinating works if one lets oneself go down the rabbit hole, and it is likely that Narucki and Macomber’s performances will make listeners do just that.” ★★★★½ 

"The Best Classical Music Tracks of 2019: Hear our critics’ favorites, crossing six centuries, compiled over a year of listening."

-Anthony Tommasini, Zachary Woolfe, Joshua Barone, Seth Colter Walls and David Allen

 "precision and tenderness"

-Zachary Woolfe

"The San Diego Union-Tribune and the Women’s Museum of California are celebrating a century of female achievement in San Diego to mark the 100th year of women’s suffrage in America.

"The fifth installment of this series pays tribute to women in the arts — the creators and performers who have fed the imagination, challenged assumptions, entertained, enlightened and enlivened the world around them...

"...Grammy Award-winning soprano and UC San Diego music professor Susan Narucki is equal parts musician and social activist. Appointed UCSD’s director of art and community engagement in 2019, she champions timely causes with as much passion as she sings about them. In 2013, Narucki commissioned the chamber opera “Cuatro Corridos,” which chronicles the trafficking of women across the U.S.-Mexico border. It earned a Latin Grammy Award nomination. The second chamber opera she commissioned in this decade, 2018’s “Inheritance,” deals with gun violence. “As artists, we use our voices to address issues in the hope we create dialogue,” Narucki said in a 2017 Union-Tribune interview. She has more than 50 albums to her credit and won a 2000 Grammy as a featured performer on composer George Crumb’s “Star-Child” album. Narucki was a 2020 Best Classical Solo Vocal Album Grammy nominee for “The Edge of Silence — Works For Voice By György Kurtág,” on which she sings in German, Hungarian and Russian."

"Narucki invests these naked, improbably powerful pieces (and the brief silences that separate them) with profound tact and riveting musicality."

 "treasurable"

"radiantly conveyed"

"Narucki's instrumental collaborators are beyond superb."

"...performances and recording...are first rate."

"Narucki is a Ninja warrior in her ability to traverse this unrelentingly difficult (both musically and emotionally) Hour-long work with such immersive passion and intensity. All four composers make brilliantly imaginative use of the instrumental forces, and the astoundingly virtuosic players - Pablo Gómez on guitar, Aleck Karis on piano and Ayano Kataolka on percussion - are vital to the success of the performance. This piece is bracingly fresh, continuously fascinating and deeply disturbing; somehow, though, you emerge with a sense of optimism that, in the proper hands, ghastly human tragedies can result in great art."

"This is a chamber opera...intimate, confrontational, disturbing and heartbreaking without ever seeming exploitative or melodramatic...Central to the success of this venture is the performance of soprano Susan Narucki, who commissioned the work...and has now performed it over a dozen times in the U.S. and Mexico...She creates the many voices that play roles in these stories with intense drama, great dignity, and deep empathy, her flexible and often resplendent voice creating ingenuousness, self-loathing, and abject despair with equal facility. She meets the many virtuosic demands of the four ballads with seeming ease, as do her three instrumental colleagues...The recording...is clear, immediate, vivid and truthful. Not to be missed."

[about Cuatro Corridos]: "...its tragic bearing is coupled with a high seriousness of purpose...The four scenes of this viscerally gripping chamber opera...relate stages in the exposure of an horrific human trafficking ring in northern Mexico...The soprano Susan Narucki, who commissioned the project for the University of California at San Diego, commands as the various women in an operatic tour-de-force...credit must go too to her more-than-accompanists: guitarist Pablo Gómez, pianist Aleck Karis and percussionist Ayano Kataoka...Cuatro Corridos is a remarkable achievement. The performance is superb and Bridge's recording a triumph."

"This is powerful, compelling, excruciatingly dramatic music...Narucki manages the huge vocal and dramatic demands with ease, displaying an ability to sing softly and at full throttle without ever losing tonal body, and an equal ability to invest what she is singing with meaning...This is a work of art that demands engagement, requires that you give it 100 percent of your intellectual and emotional attention...highly recommended." 

The American soprano Susan Narucki was so horrified by the human trafficking rampant on the border between the United States and Mexico that she decided to address the subject head-on: she commissioned a chamber opera for soprano and three players, a collaborative work that tellingly crosses borders. The result, Cuatro Corridos, comprises four scenes with libretto by novelist Jorge Volpi and music by two American-based composers (Lei Liang and Arlene Sierra) and two Mexican composers (Hilda Paredes and Herbert Vázquez)...Narucki is fearless and expressive as she inhabits each character. She shares the stage with equally intrepid colleagues: guitarist Pablo Gómez, pianist Aleck Karis and percussionist Ayano Kataoka.

"If classical music and classically trained artists are relevant in the contemporary canon, it is because of projects like Cuatro Corridos (Four Songs). While opinion makers argue about the issue of relevancy, artists like American soprano Susan Narucki and her collaborators are making it happen." 

"This music isn't suspenseful; but rather, suspended. The confidence and skill of all of the musicians is in this ability: to judiciously exploit subtlety while completely avoiding any one voice screaming for attention even when Helgeson asks for extreme ranges. Soprano Susan Narucki is a natural choice for performing Helgeson's vocal music. If it wasn't written to her strengths as a vocalist, one would never know. She has an elegant way of working with words themselves in this recording. Even when she chooses breathy effects or softer dynamics, the text still shines through with clarity...It seems as though Helgeson, and Narucki with Talea Ensemble through their performance, desire that slight drifting of listener attention into imaginative thought and relish being able to refocus the attention on a new sound time and again. Listeners can put themselves in the place of the singer becoming somewhat lost in the act of singing and thereby find themselves, quite wonderfully, lost in the act of listening."