This album presents the complete works Ligeti composed for string quartet between 1950 and 1968. The two numbered string quartets are predated by a lyrical early Andante and Allegretto, the folk-music inflections of which pre-echo the hints of Bartók in the first quartet, Métamorphoses nocturnes. The calculated anarchy, dynamic extremes and sublime atmospheres of the Second Quartet present Ligeti at his most distinctive. These spectacular works are performed here by the Verona Quartet, firmly established as one of the most distinguished ensembles on the chamber music scene today.

REVIEW:

This album, celebrating Ligeti’s 2023 centennial, presents his complete works for string quartet composed between 1950-1968. The two numbered string quartets are predated by a lyrical early Andante and Allegretto, the folk-music inflections of which foreshadow the hints of Bartók in the first quartet, Métamorphoses nocturnes. The calculated anarchy, dynamic extremes and sublime atmospheres of the Second Quartet present Ligeti at his most distinctive. These spectacular works are performed here by the Verona Quartet, winner of the Cleveland Quartet Award and currently serving as Quartet-in-Residence at Oberlin College and Conservatory.

-- TheViolinist.com

György Ligeti’s Études redefined the piano’s tonal possibilities and are considered one of his major creative achievements, as well as being one of the most significant sets of piano studies of the 20th century. They inevitably draw on influences from the past such as Chopin and Debussy, but avoid any sense of eclecticism. Ligeti’s often spectacularly virtuoso use of complex rhythms and geometric patterns proceeds from simple core ideas to create music that is ‘neither “avant-garde” nor “traditional”, neither tonal nor atonal’, and always backed by that glint of humour in the composer’s eye.

In addition to his popular compositions such as orchestral works and chamber music, György Ligeti also wrote vocal music, among them numerous and demanding a cappella choral works. These, just like his canonically treated instrumental works, reflect his changes of style. With the exception of the Latin 'Lux aeterna' (1966) and 'Three Fantasias' based on Friedrich Hölderlin (1982) Ligeti exclusively set Hungarian poetry to music, showing a marked preference for texts by Balint Balassa (1554-1594) and Sándor Weöres (1913-1989). Ligeti wanted to set the respective contents to music programmatically but focussed especially on particular phonetic sound sequences, rhythms, intonations and accentuations of the Hungarian language. Translations of this speech music are nigh on impossible and even dispensable as you do not have to understand the words in order to experience the choral works as music that is rich in tone colours, rhythmically concise and extremely expressive. The radio choir of SWR is one of the international top ensembles on the professional choir scene. Ever since the ensemble was founded almost 75 years ago it has devoted its passion and extraordinary vocal competence to exemplary performances and the further development of vocal music. Award-winning Yuval Weinberg has been the chief conductor of the SWR Vokalensemble since the beginning of the season 2020/2021.

Quatuor Diotima makes its Pentatone debut with a recording of Györgi Ligeti’s string quartets. While the second quartet from 1968 is an avant-garde classic, the first from 1953-54, “Metamorphoses nocturnes”, is often nicknamed Bartók’s seventh quartet, pointing out the continuity between these two Hungarian master composers. Despite moments of nostalgia, it already possesses the ferocious, adventurous nature of the later quartet. In-between these two iconoclast works, the Andante and Allegretto from 1950 offers an intimate moment of repose. The members of Diotima long postponed recording Ligeti’s string quartets, intimidated by their significance in music history and the demands they place on the players, but now the time has come to pursue this fascinating project and share it with the world. The quartet is fascinated by the cinematic qualities of Ligeti’s music and its use in films, including Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey. The album cover pays homage to that iconic movie. Quatuor Diotima is one the most in-demand chamber ensembles in the world today, and has worked in close collaboration with several of the greatest composers of the late twentieth century. Reflected in the mirror of today’s music, the quartet projects a new light onto the masterpieces of the 19th and 20th centuries.

REVIEW:

These two works, the 2nd following 15 years on from the 1st, are not so far apart as a casual listen might indicate, and the edgy performances of the Quatuor Diotima emphasize the continuity. The String Quartet No. 1 consists of a dozen short movements that, in their economy, suggest that something other than semi-traditional melodic material is happening here, and the Quatuor Diotima gives sharp, clipped performances that bring out the modernity of the work. The Second Quartet requires hair-trigger concentration from the players and the ability to make extremely quiet sounds at the top of the instruments’ registers. The Quatuor Diotima’s performance in the various insect-like sounds in the work is nonpareil. A truly excellent Ligeti recording that penetrates deeply into the composer’s essence.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

Ligeti's works on this disc provide an excellent cross-section of the metamorphosis in his compositional technique over a period of 30 years. The Violin Concerto incorporates influences from Medieval and Renaissance music, from late Romantic music and various contemporary styles.

REVIEWS:

Lintu’s Lontano shimmers with ever-shifting colours, he highlights the awe-inspiring grandeur of Atmosphères, and his gorgeously shaped San Francisco Polyphony is vibrant and lyrical—all matched by Ondine’s rich, warm, detailed recording. And Lintu’s vision has the ideal Violin Concerto soloist in Benjamin Schmid, who manages to make Ligeti’s strange, mischievous writing sound sweetly expressive, even touching. His clear sense of line leads the ear effortlessly through the second movement’s eerie microtonal textures, complete with natural horns and ocarinas, and he has superb articulation and rhythmic bite in the tricksy opening movement.

-- The Strad

The selections on this disc are as good a place as any for the newcomer to this composer to get an appreciation for what is so exciting about Ligeti’s way of expressing himself in music. Schmid[’s]…is a committed performance…Lintu and a reduced Finnish Radio Symphony accompany very well and the sound allows much wonderful detail to come through. The performances…are all worthy in their own right. The programme on this CD would seem to be an ideal place to obtain a good sampling of Ligeti’s music.

-- MusicWeb International

Superb renditions of the Ligeti Quartets at bargain price.

Listening to these quartets makes one regret all the more that Ligeti did not fulfill his plan to compose a third quartet, as Richard Whitehouse noted in his accompanying detailed essay. Nonetheless, one can be thankful for the two outstanding works on this disc. They give ample evidence of a real successor to Béla Bartók in the genre. These quartets have been recorded a number of times, but the Parker approach these works as if newly discovered. My first exposure to them came via the Arditti Quartet in Sony’s Ligeti Edition, an invaluable compendium (later taken over by Warner as the Ligeti Project) of the vast majority of the composer’s oeuvre. I still value the Arditti’s accounts highly, as I do those of the younger Artemis Quartet on Virgin. Now we have the first “bargain” set by another young group that I had not heard of before. Right off, I will state that the Parker Quartet has nothing whatsoever to fear from its illustrious predecessors. It was also good to include the early Andante and Allegretto, even if it shows little in the way of hallmarks of the mature Ligeti. The quartets belong to two distinct stages in the composer’s life: the first from his “Hungarian” period before he left for the West, and the second from his more experimental years spent in Germany. How fortunate it would have been if Ligeti had given us an example late in his life when his compositions became a synthesis of the experimental and the more folk-oriented music of the earlier period. Alas, it was not to be.

The Quartet No. 1, while owing no small debt to Bartók, has Ligeti’s identity firmly stamped on it from the beginning. As Whitehouse points out, it is in one continuous movement that can be divided into anywhere from four to eight sections. The Artemis Quartet’s recording has twelve tracks for the quartet and the Arditti eight, while the present one divides the work into four sections. I can think of no better introduction to Ligeti than this work, unless it be his Musica ricercata for piano or the Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet, an adaptation of six of the piano pieces from the former work, both written in the period of the quartet. Indeed, Ligeti quotes the Vivace energico from the Musica ricercata or the Presto ruvido movement from the Bagatelles, the wind version of that movement, just before the “one minute mark” on the third track, following a delightfully humorous waltz. There is much comedy typical of this composer throughout the quartet, and the Parkers relish the humour without overdoing it. Their many slides are more pronounced than those by the Arditti, their pizzicati more vehement, and their pauses longer. They are obviously having a great deal of fun with the work, whereas the Arditti and to a lesser extent the Artemis project greater experience with the work, not to say that either quartet is bored with it. Having heard this quartet many times in the past, I was struck by their sheer energy and at the same time the utter stillness of the work’s quiet sections. They really bring out the contrasts in the quartet better than I recall hearing before, and their virtuosity is staggering. This may now be my favourite account of this amazing quartet.

The Quartet No. 2 is a much tougher work to get to know. Written in 1968 for the LaSalle Quartet, who incidentally made a famous recording of these quartets for DG, it is in five movements and structurally recalls Bartók. In every other way, though, this is as representative a composition of Ligeti’s middle period, as the Quartet No. 1 was of his first period. It begins with loud unison pizzicato that, as Whitehouse writes, sets the work in motion. Richard Steinitz in the definitive study on the composer in English, György Ligeti: Music of the Imagination, describes the quartet as “a wild zigzag trajectory catapulted out of furious energy into a state of graceful stasis, choreographed in five movements.” I have had the pleasure of attending a performance of the work and can say that the visual element is important in getting to really appreciate it. The most memorable movement for me is the third, one of those “mechanistic” pieces for which Ligeti is famous. It is quite similar to the third movement, Movimento preciso e mecannico of his Chamber Concerto. It is played mostly pizzicato, run amok, and is microtonal and rhythmically complex. The fourth movement juxtaposes loud, jagged chords with very quiet moments. The quartet ends by vaporizing into nothingness, but not before a fleeting episode of melancholy, something that would be more prevalent in Ligeti’s late compositions. As in the earlier work, the Parkers are superb and fully the equal of the Arditti and Artemis recordings. Their sheer virtuosity is evident throughout this demanding work.

After the second quartet, the Andante and Allegretto comes as quite a shock. We are now back in a much earlier period - not only Bartókian, but Romantic even. Yet, it is genuine Ligeti with his own brand of Hungarian folk melody. In a way it is a nice to end the disc with music that is simple and beautiful. One can sit back and enjoy the warm sound of this young ensemble. They treat the work with as much respect as the later and greater quartets.

To have these three works in such outstanding performances, recorded in sound that is both rich and clear, and at bargain price, is a real treat.

-- Leslie Wright, MusicWeb International

Ligeti's two-act opera in four scenes, Le grand macabre, is an entertaining, taut example of musical theater residing somewhere between parody and ominous seriousness, between clowning and wisdom. The opera's hero, Nekrotzar (Dracula), alias Le grand macabre, has not only ambitions to suck blood but also apocalyptic visions: he wants to bring about the end of the world personally (but fails to do so). This production received the quarterly German Record Critics' Award. Opera in four acts (four scenes).

This Ligeti CD contains several of his best-known and most characteristic pieces (several of which were used in the score for 2001: A Space Odyssey), and the ensemble's highly artistic interpretation leaves nothing to be desired. Ensemble "die reihe", Wien / Friedrich Cerha: conductor / Sinfonie-Orchester des S�dwestfunks, Baden-Baden / Ernest Bour: conductor / Kammerorchester des Saarl�ndischen Rundfunks, Saarbr�cken / Antonio Janigro: conductor / Schola Cantorum Stuttgart / Clytus Gottwald: conductor.

My first encounter with Lucille Chung's cultivated pianism and individual artistry occurred at her 1996 New York recital debut where she played one of the most memorable all-Liszt programs in my listening experience. She proves every bit as impressive in a cross-section of Ligeti's piano music, and easily holds her own in the company of supreme Ligeti interpreters such as Fredrik Ullén and Pierre-Laurent Aimard. The chattering rhythmic complexities throughout the second book of Etudes benefit from the immediacy and impact of Dynamic's close miking. Chung doesn't delineate the inner rhythms of Der Zauberlehrling or L'escalier di diable with Aimard's easy adroitness, yet she makes Fém's staccatos more distinct and brings more varied articulation and melodic pointing to Columna infinita.


In the two early Capriccios and the Invention, I lean more toward Chung's fanciful, crisply dynamic readings than to Irina Kataeva's accomplished sobriety in Sony's Ligeti Edition. It's a toss-up between Aimard and Chung in the Musica Ricercata's 11 quirky, diverse short movements. Aimard makes his points through steady rhythmic cumulation and has a superior instrument on hand. However, Chung's discreetly effective rubatos personalize the music to more dramatic effect. I'm not sure if Chung coached these works with Ligeti, but I think he'll warm to how this gifted pianist plays his music.
--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Ligeti, G.: Etudes, Books 1 and 2

We pay homage to a conscientious artist who has found a composer and a cause to champion. (Audiophile Audition)

Although Gyorgy Ligeti composed only three works for the organ, these pieces mark significant stages in the course of his compositional development. More importantly, they revolutionized the world of organ music and provided the initial spark for an entire wave of new music for the organ. Volumina completely dispenses with the parameters normally used to structure time in a musical work, such as melody, rhythm, and harmony. The only active structural parameter in this music is tone color. Harmonies unfolds as an unbroken chain of ten-note chords; only one note is changed from one chord to the next. Coulee is a chain of extremely fast notes that describe a slow harmonic progression. Also included are organist Dominik Sustek's organ transcription of Ligeti's eleven-movement piano cycle Musica ricercata as well as Sprachsignale - one of Sustek's own original compositions that was inspired by Ligeti's Articulation.

LIGETI Strings Quartets Nos. 1 and 2. Sonata for Solo Cello • Qrt Béla • AEON 1332 (50:20)


Quatour Béla has named its disc of Ligeti’s string quartets after the First, “Métamorphoses nocturnes.” That may seem a strange choice, given that the Second is the more iconic, and certainly the more historically significant, but it is apt, as the First Quartet is the real revelation here. That’s not to say that either the Second Quartet or the cello sonata is found wanting—the quality is exceptionally high throughout—but where other recordings of these works demonstrate a clear hierarchy, the Béla’s account presents the First Quartet as fully the equal of its successor.


The quiet and mysterious opening of the First Quartet rarely taxes performers, and from the opening bars alone it would be very difficult to separate out the great recordings from the also-rans. But then comes a sudden sforzando , and rarely have Ligeti’s shock tactics have been as effective as they are here. This account is all about contrasts, with the many sudden changes of tempo, dynamic, and texture presented as starkly and brutally as possible. And for all its undoubted sophistication, the work really responds to this approach. Its gradual unfolding—a metamorphosis by thematic transformation across a single-movement, 20-minute span—is punctuated and delineated by these outbursts. Even more impressively, the tonal control and balance between the instruments is always maintained, even at the loudest dynamics. There is lyricism here too, and a certain folk character to the quieter melodic music, but that isn’t really the priority for these players, who sensibly avoid over-interpreting the more naïve passages.


The Ligeti quartets are now well served on disc, particularly by young ensembles specializing in new music, and Quatour Béla follow in the footsteps of similar groups in recent years, including the Artemis (reviewed in 29:5), Parker (33:5), JACK, and Keller (37:2) Quartets. Although I won’t claim to have heard them all, I will express a preference for a more senior ensemble, namely the Arditti Quartet, whose 1994 recording (Sony 62306) has long seemed, to me at least, the definitive account. This new recording is the first I’ve heard that seriously challenges the Ardittis’. But these are very different readings, and the qualities that Quatour Béla brings put both works in a different light. That sense of immediacy and total immersion in the First Quartet is as much a product of the sound engineering as it is of the playing. The recording quality here is exceptional, better even than that on the Ardittis’ account. The miking is not too close, and there is warmth to the sound, but each of the instruments comes through with absolute clarity, and the wide stereo array places each of them at a definite and separate point around your living room.


The Second Quartet is given a reading just as fine as that of the First—though perhaps it doesn’t pull away quite as far from the competition this time, as the Second is the work that most other ensembles give the greater attention. But, again, the wide dynamic range, the excellent ensemble, the responsiveness of the players to the composer’s sudden changes of direction, and the crystal-clear audio all add up to make for a compelling account. The pizzicato third movement is particularly impressive. Unlike the Ardittis’ recording, where the more homogeneous sound makes the gradual phase shifts sound like a single, increasingly dysfunctional mechanism, the autonomy of the individual players granted by the superior audio here instead gives it a more heterogeneous character—makes it sound more like chamber music. Conversely, the brutality of the cluster writing in the fourth movement is all the more oppressive for the unity of intent the players display, and again for the immediacy and clarity of the recorded sound.


It’s not a perfect account, and in one or two crucial regards the Ardittis’ retain the upper hand. Much of the writing in the outer movements involves pp, sul ponticello , tremolo effects on artificial harmonics, and in my experience only the Ardittis’ can make that sort of device sound truly musical. There is also a sense of poise lacking, a common failing with many younger ensembles approaching this music, but again something that makes the Arditti Quartet stand out. The last movement in particular needs to express a paradoxical mix of languorous stillness and episodic progression. And then it needs to disappear off at the very end, melting away in one of those scurrying tremolo effects. Quatour Béla doesn’t quite manage either, and so the conclusion loses some of its effect.


That’s a minor criticism though, and is the only thing that keeps this recording from taking the top spot from the Ardittis’. The two works together come to about 40 minutes, and choosing a filler can be tricky. This time round, the Quartet’s cellist, Luc Dedreuil, gives us the early Sonata for Solo Cello. This too is a fine reading, although of a much more straightforward work. Again, the sonics are excellent and the playing is both committed and engaging.


An excellent recording all round and highly recommended, especially for the First Quartet, which, these players conclusively demonstrate, is anything but juvenilia.


FANFARE: Gavin Dixon

"After a period of less involvement with keyboard instruments since the 1950s, the first book of Études pour piano confirmed Ligeti's return to writing for the piano. The Trois pièces pour deux pianos composed in 1976 stand as a central work in the composer's oeuvre and compositional development. The importance of rhythm is omnipresent, and his interest in this parameter would increase in the early 1980s with the discovery of the polyrhythms of African musicians and the vast complexity of Conlon Nancarrow's Studies for Player Piano, as revealed by his Études.

György Ligeti composed his eighteen Études pour piano over a period of more than seventeen years. His first book of six Études was published in 1985. From the outset, the composer planned to compose a second volume, also comprising six Études. The reference to the piano tradition and the collections of six and twelve études by Chopin, Liszt, or Debussy is obvious. The second book, composed between 1988 and 1994, finally contained eight études. His third and last book includes four more Études composed between 1995 and 2001." -Cathy Krier

This recording was nominated for the 2000 Grammy Award for "Best Opera Recording.

György Ligeti's only opera, 'Le Grande Macabre,' after a play by Michel de Ghelderode, concerns itself with nothing less than the end of the world. This is promised by the evil Nekrotzar but, despite dire warnings and ominous foreshadowing, the whole thing is something of a bust and in the end the only casualty is Nekrotzar himself. In between are any number of lascivious and criminal goings-on in fictional Breughelland, a place of infinite corruption, socially, morally and politically (and enormously funny in the bargain). Ligeti's brilliant, delightful, infinitely difficult music ranges from preludes and interludes scored for automobile horns and doorbells to the breathtaking coloratura flights of Gepopo, the soprano chief of the secret police. The performance under Esa-Pekka Salonen is beyond praise.

Volume 8 of Sony's Ligeti Edition presents the revised score of 1997, taken from live performances in Paris. There are numerous changes and the opera is shorter by some ten minutes. The revision also changes the language from German to English. The German original is available on Wergo in a fine performance. The Sony recording preserves a performance of even greater brilliance of what is now one of the great comic operas in English.