György Ligeti

David Greilsammer ~ Fantaisie-Fantasme
Naïve | 18 aout 2007 | Classical | APE+CUE | 3% Recovery | 267 MB | Covers+Booklet | 76'36"

Beau moment musical offert ici par David Greilsammer. Dans la plus pure tradition de "l’impromptu" pianistique, ces pièces semblent improvisées tant leur naturel est touchant. Elles témoignent a fortiori d’une profonde réflexion dans leur interprétation ainsi que dans leur cohabitation insolite. La composition de l’album répond en effet à une construction aussi rigoureuse et intime que celle d’un recueil de poème, traversée par la même veine mélancolique, la même sensibilité élégiaque. L’artiste a eu la judicieuse idée de placer les pièces d’un programme profondément personnel et éclectique en miroir, autour de la 'Fantaisie en do mineur' de Mozart qui culmine de toute sa gravité au centre de l’enregistrement. Aux côtés de Cage, Schoenberg, Ligeti, Janacek et Jonathan Keren (pièces en création pour l’occasion), même Bach et Mozart, par leur traitement intimiste, apparaissent comme des mystérieux contemporains, un brin romantiques, à nos oreilles. Ce disque nous initie donc avant tout à une sensibilité par-delà les époques balayées et les divergences de style et de répertoire ; preuve que nous sommes bien en présence d’une véritable personnalité artistique. On est particulièrement sensible, notamment, à la façon dont l’artiste joue avec les résonances et les silences de l’instrument : presque un piano métaphysique, par moments. On a l’impression que ce qu’il cherche est derrière, entre les notes, ailleurs semble-t-il. Tout cela nous laisse tendrement rêveur, nostalgique, contemplatif…

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Bernard Haitink - Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra - Live - The Radio Recordings (1999) {14CD Box Set Q Disc 97014}
XLD rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 4.33 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 2.08 Gb
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© 1999 Q Disc | 97014
Classical / Orchestral

This huge set is "an initiative of Radio Netherlands (the Dutch World Service) and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra…" presented to Bernard Haitink on his seventieth birthday as a tribute to his consummate musicmaking." Haitink, born in Amsterdam in 1929, became joint chief Conductor of the Concertebouw in 1961, along with Eugen Jochum, and was its chief conductor from 1963 to 1988. Like his predecessor, Eduard van Beinum, Haitink also was principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, from 1967 to 1979, and in 1978 became musical Director of the Glyndebourne Opera. Ten years later he became musical director of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. Haitink guest conducted most of the major orchestras of the world and has received numerous awards for his services to music. In January 1999 Haitink was named "Honorary Conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra."

Franco Donatoni wrote glorious, sparkling music in his own avant-garde style. He was a man of contradictions. He did not always value his work and yet it is music of quality with scintillating sound. It is music of vision. At least three generations of composers studied with Donatoni. About Ligeti's music on this CD, the pieces for piano are truly unbelievable, but the Horn Trio is without a doubt one of the most important works written in the last 50 years.

Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 7 lasts no more than twelve minutes. The composer wrote it in March 1960 and dedicated it to his first wife Nina Vasilyevna Varzar - or rather, to her memory, for she had died five years earlier of an insidious form of cancer; suddenly, and without warning. It is a very personal work, one that is close to the composer's heart, for here Shostakovich breaks the strict sequence of keys he imposed on himself. Alban Berg's String Quartet No.1 has 2 movements, bears the opus number 3, and is nevertheless considered the composer's first autonomous work, even though the composer himself points out that he received it personally from Schönberg.

Georg Friedrich Haas - Trois Hommages - Mabel Kwan (2018) {New Focus Recordings}
FLAC (tracks) - 16bit/44kHz - Official Digital Download (qobuz.com) -> 277 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 170 Mb
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© 2018 Mabel Kwan / New Focus Recordings
Classical / Experimental / Modern Classical / Minimal

Chicago based pianist Mabel Kwan (Ensemble Dal Niente) releases the premiere recording of Georg Friedrich Haas' Trois Hommages, a beguiling work for two pianos tuned a quarter tone apart and played by one performer. Dedicated to Steve Reich, Gyorgy Ligeti, and Josef Matthias Hauer, Haas' expansive work deconstructs stylistic elements of prominent modern compositional aesthetics as well as the central association the piano has with equal temperament and its impact on music history.

In the mid-1960s, the rigid and colourless British way of life was irrevocably transformed by the emergence of the underground movement, a loose collective of young radicals who introduced new social, sexual and aesthetic perspectives. Operating out of the heart of London, their various activities, from the newspaper the International Times, to the psychedelic club UFO, promoted alternative lifestyles and values and sparked a cultural revolution.