György Kurtág's Games in Rangsit: how Beam plays piano pieces with palms, fists and glissandos, and reads the opening finger number before his AI piano lessons

Beam is nine and lives in Rangsit, in a house next to a small park where older boys play takraw every afternoon. He is energetic, impatient and not fond of sitting still. His first try at a traditional beginner book ended quickly, because he hated playing the same five notes in a straight line over and over.

His aunt, a music student at a university in the city, suggested something different. She opened a score by György Kurtág, a Hungarian composer born in 1926, and showed him pages full of strange symbols: shaded blocks meaning press many keys with your palm, swooping lines meaning slide across the keys, and long empty spaces meaning hold the silence.

The collection is called Játékok, which means Games in Hungarian. Kurtág started writing it in 1973, partly inspired by watching small children at the piano. He noticed that they explore sound freely, banging, stroking and listening, before anyone teaches them rules. He wanted pieces that kept that curiosity alive.

Some pieces use only the black keys, some ask the player to play with fists or forearms, and others are tiny tributes to friends and other composers. Many are less than a minute long. Over the decades Kurtág kept adding volumes, so the collection grew into a kind of musical diary spanning much of his life.

Pieces that begin with play, not rules

Beam was delighted that the first piece his aunt picked asked him to slam a cluster of low notes with his whole palm, then listen until the sound faded completely. He laughed, then went quiet as the rumble died away. She explained that listening was the actual skill being practised, not the bang.

Kurtág and his wife Márta, also a pianist, often performed pieces from Játékok together at one piano, mixing them with his transcriptions of Bach. Their recordings show how these little games, played by two people who had been married for decades, could feel tender and serious at the same time.

He was also known as a demanding teacher who could spend an hour on a single phrase. Many famous musicians travelled to Budapest to work with him. In his nineties he completed his first opera, Fin de partie, based on Samuel Beckett's play, which premiered at La Scala in Milan in 2018.

Back in Rangsit, Beam's parents liked how happy the games made him, and they agreed to proper piano lessons. Because his aunt is busy with exams, they signed him up for TIGA ALPHA, an online piano learning app that lets him practise standard skills between her occasional visits.

The AI piano teacher handles the parts Beam finds less exciting, such as reading notes and keeping steady time. It listens to every attempt, flashes a friendly marker on the wrong note and lets him slow pieces down. He grudgingly admits that it has made his reading much faster.

Beam notices the small number inked over the first key of a phrase and aims precisely that finger, even in a piece full of clusters. His aunt explained that Kurtág's free-sounding pieces still contain careful choices, and a good start makes the gesture land exactly where the composer imagined.

Now his practice mixes both worlds. He plays two pieces from the app's beginner piano course, then rewards himself with a Kurtág game, perhaps a glissando that whooshes from top to bottom, or a piece made of single notes with long pauses between them. Each kind of practice makes the other more fun.

For children who want to learn piano but resist drills, this approach can be a lifesaver. Sound exploration teaches touch, listening and control, while structured lessons build reading. Mixing them keeps a restless child at the instrument long enough to discover that it can be play rather than punishment.

At school, Beam's music lessons mostly involve singing. His teacher let him demonstrate one palm cluster on the classroom keyboard, and the children were stunned that something so noisy was real composed music. Several begged to try, and the teacher had to set a strict one-bang-each rule.

Beam still is not good at sitting still, but now he sits for twenty minutes most evenings. He says the trick is knowing that a reward game is waiting, and that once he can play piano pieces cleanly, nobody minds a little noise afterwards. He moves between AI piano lessons and his aunt's Kurtág book, and he has started making up his own games too, hoping to play music for the takraw boys next door one day, loud enough to make them pause.

Frequently asked questions

Q: What is Kurtág's Játékok? A: Játékok, Hungarian for Games, is a large collection of short piano pieces that György Kurtág began writing in 1973. Many are intended for children and use playful techniques such as clusters played with the palm, glissandos and silences.

Q: Is Játékok suitable for absolute beginners? A: Some of the earliest pieces can be explored by beginners, because they focus on gesture and sound rather than reading complex rhythms. A teacher or an online piano learning app can guide which pieces suit each stage.

Many tools talk about practice, but the details matter. Look for an online piano teaching application with an AI piano teaching app that explains its feedback, a piano teaching app that lets you repeat tricky bars, and an online piano lessons app that keeps piano teaching with AI friendly rather than stressful. A structured piano learning course gives you the map, and an AI online piano course helps you follow it every day, which is why so many people now choose to learn piano online. Modern piano teaching borrows from decades of music teaching experience, and the lesson is consistent: people learn music through regular, focused practice.

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