György Ligeti

Vol 1 of the György Ligeti Edition, World Premiere Recording of the Duets
Hommage à Hilding Rosenberg (1982)
Baladä si joc (1950)
Andante and Allegretto (1950)

This Teldec collection was a project close to György Ligeti’s heart – the pioneering Hungarian composer was actively involved in the recording process up until his death in 2006. The artists had long-standing relationships with Ligeti and his work, both in the studio and in concert: pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Schönberg and Asko Ensembles led by Reinbert de Leeuw.

György Ligeti - Works For Piano And Cembalo - Erika Haase (1991)
Classical | EAC: FLAC+Cue+Log | 1 Cd, Covers | 228 Mb
Label: col legno - Date: 1991

György Ligeti continues to be prolific, and this selection has the first book of the growing collection of piano Études (1985). Erika Haase, who worked on the recording with the composer, retraces his compositional footsteps with the early Capriccios (1947) and Invention (1948) which show him distancing himself gradually from Bartok. The 11 ricercars (1951-53), the last a Homage to Frescobaldi, go beyond what Hungarian orthodoxy would allow in the early 1950s and No. 10, in its wind quintet arrangement, had too many minor seconds for inclusion in a concert - in 1956 Ligeti left his native country…

The six Bagatelles were originally part of a collection of 12 bagatelles composed for piano between 1951 and 1953. In 1953, Ligeti transcribed six of the bagatelles for a wind quintet made up of flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon. With the exception of the second and fifth bagatelles, these are quick, spirited little pieces. They reflect Ligeti's economical approach to composition, as a minimum number of notes are used to maximum effect……

The unifying idea of the concerto provides a way to get a handle on György Ligeti's experimental spirit, for a concerto here represents several fundamentally different things. The Cello Concerto of 1966, right at the height of Ligeti's exuberantly fearless adventures in 1960s Germany, might almost be called an anti-concerto, with the cello doing its best to hang on the edge of silence. Sample the very first movement, both for the precision of cellist Christian Poltéra's work at the low end of the dynamic spectrum and for the ideally clean engineering work by the BIS label, operating in a variety of Norwegian venues and mastering them, well, masterfully. The Chamber Concerto for 13 Instruments and the Melodien are essentially concertos for orchestra, with distinctive roles for each of the instruments, while the five-movement Piano Concerto, completed in 1988, is a fine and technically demanding example of Ligeti's later pulse-based, polyrhythmic style.