Their friendship and musical partnership spans four decades. As the legendary Hungarian composer turns 100, cellist Steven Isserlis celebrates a musician of boundless imagination, humour – and his vivid way with wordsI vividly remember my first meeting with György Kurtág. It was 40 or so years ago at the International Musicians Seminar in Prussia Cove, Cornwall. I was sitting in the dining hall there, when a man with grizzled hair and an unusually fervent countenance came up to me and, with barely any introduction, started talking about my pizzicato playing in a performance he’d heard of the Schubert quintet some years earlier, in which I’d taken the second cello part. This man was none other than Kurtág – accompanied then, as almost invariably during those years, by his wife Márta; she hung back somewhat, but didn’t miss a word.I was immediately struck by his magnetic intensity, his fierce passion for music and his unique way of speaking English – punctuated by frequent utterances of ...