This music you are hearing has a muffled clangour that echoes on, suggesting the cold, empty spaces of a broken heart. An oboe is tracing a grey horizon, while string instruments fidget nearby, wishing they were somewhere else. There is also a woman in the picture, alone. “Now that there is one hope less,” she sings, “there will be one song more.”

So opens Messages of the Late Miss RV Troussova, the work that, almost three decades ago, established the Hungarian composer György Kurtág internationally. It will be heard next Sunday at the Aldeburgh Festival, where Kurtág is this year’s featured composer. Like many of his works involving a solo vocalist, Messages is a dramatic monologue. The title suggests that the protagonist speaks from beyond the grave, perhaps after committing suicide. Nevertheless, she expresses herself with compelling urgency and poignancy, telling of the bitter emotional residue of a finished love affair.