Kafka Fragments at the Linbury Studio; Nabucco at the Royal Opera House

Yes, well…aphorisms are never easy to deal with, they are a naturally intimidating form of utterance. If you admit that you don’t understand them, you may well be thought thick. If you reject a request for an explanation of one, on the grounds that what it says can’t be put any other way, you may well get away with it. Many aphorisms are intended to shut down a line of thought, La Rochefoucauld’s for instance, while the best of Nietzsche’s say, in his words, ‘what other people would take a book to say, and would still leave unsaid’. Setting them to music sounds a bright idea for certain composers, but mainly aphorisms advertise their self-sufficiency and ward off any kind of expansion or addition.

Kafka wasn’t one of the masters of the aphoristic mode, and mainly didn’t try to be. So compiling deadly one-liners from his writings requires raiding his letters and diaries, and that is what György Kurtág did for his Kafka Fragments, which was staged at the Linbury Studio last week by Netia Jones, sung (in German) by Claire Booth, who was accompanied by Peter Manning, sometimes on his own violin, sometimes on a mistuned one. The work lasts slightly under an hour, and comprises what the press release describes as ‘40 exquisitely crafted miniatures ranging from a few seconds to several minutes’.

I was mostly bewildered, though it was clear that both performers were exemplary. Manning sat at the side of the stage scraping his fiddle obediently; Booth demonstrated astonishing vocal and acting prowess, striding, leaping, slithering, running, expressively gesticulating, while singing her fragments. It would be going too far to say that she acted out what she was singing, since mostly the fragments, or aphorisms, defy that.