György Ligeti

This volume of Sony's György Ligeti Edition contains all of Ligeti's music either written for mechanical reproduction or arranged for mechanical instruments. Dating from his brief flirtation with the Fluxus movement, "Poéme Symphonique," scored for 100 metronomes, produced one of the great scandals of Ligeti's career. As the metronomes wind down, what sounds like a waning rain storm evolves into overlaying rhythmic patterns and finally a single metronome coming to a halt. From the other end of his career come the etudes arranged for player piano.

György Ligeti - Double Concerto, San Francisco Polyphony, etc. (1987) {BIS-CD-53}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 373 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 175 Mb
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© 1974-87, 1987 Grammofon AB BIS | BIS-CD-53
Classical / Chamber Music / Concerto / Modern Classical / Modern Composition

In 1961, the young Hungarian composer György Ligeti did a pretty amazing thing: he wrote a piece called Atmospheres, in which almost nothing happens, extremely slowly. The European avant-garde was still obsessed with quantifying musical parameters, with crystallizing pitch, duration, timbre, and register into rigid regions, radiating with speed and hardness – and then Ligeti cast out this massive orchestral goo, the enemy of all geometries, devoid of contours and as slow and gaseous as a trip through Saturn. A paean to all mysterious and intangible, Atmospheres initialized both a brilliant swerve from the music of its time, and a kind of life-journey for Ligeti's own incipient voice: a musical vision on the verge of disintegration, inventively trying to put itself back together, to re-integrate.

Amazon.com
This Ligeti entry in the Deutsch Grammophon (DG) 20th Century Classics series was one of the first Ligeti CDs. It remains a fine single-disc introduction to Ligeti, one of the greatest of late 20th century composers. These works are all from Ligeti's 1960s prime when he was exploring micropolyphony. If you never heard anything else, you would have a good basic sense of what Ligeti's contribution was to the late 20th century avant-garde. Included are "Lux Aeterna," the eerie choral work from 1962, made famous for its inclusion in Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," and the String Quartet No. 2 from 1968, performed by the LaSalle Quartet. I think the Arditti Quartet surpassed the LaSalles with their Sony recording found in the "Ligeti Edition, Vol. 1," but this version is superb in its own right. The other three pieces are performed by the Ensemble InterContemporain, led by Pierre Boulez – "Ramifications," (1968-1969) "Chamber Concerto" (1970-1971) and the very strange vocal "Aventures" (1962-1965).

According to some, Ligeti is about as post-modern as you can get. However, Ligeti's composition is more than just atonal, postmodern music, as demonstrated on this disc the amazingly effective use of space and time, and advanced virtuosity at the absolute service of the composer's artistic vision. In his own words: "the ironic theatricalizing of the past is quite foreign to me." Written between 1985 and 1992, the Piano Concerto and Violin Concerto together are supposed to demonstrate the full expressive range of his later works. The Piano Concerto is a whirlwind of rhythmically driven fantasies, created by precise, almost mechanical, colliding cross-rhythms, and twisted, sprightly melodies. The Violin Concerto is just as quirky and jarring, but wilder and more impassioned, less 'mechanical,' more vigorous, and ultimately the highlight of the disc.

Amazon.com Customer Review

Alberto Rosado showcases some of the most significant modern composers in this well-considered programme. Inevitably he’s up against fierce competition, not least Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s recordings of both Ligeti’s Ricercata (included on the disc which received Gramophone’s Contemporary Award in 1997) and the complete Vingt Regards.