György Ligeti

This is a fine collection of moving, muscular performances by this seminal postwar composer. Surely the best known of the works on this disc is the Second String Quartet, one of the masterpieces of 20th-century music–although you might not know it's a masterpiece until the heartbreaking last movement. But the First String Quartet, written before Ligeti emigrated from Hungary to the West, is fascinating: it shows Ligeti working through the influence of Bartók, particularly Bartók's Third and Fourth Quartets–music Ligeti knew only silently, from the score, since performances of Bartók's music were banned by the Hungarian communist regime.

György Ligeti - Clear or Cloudy: Complete Recordings on Deutsche Grammophon (2006) {4CD Box Set, DG 00289 477 6443}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 1.13 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 740 Mb | Full Artwork | 5% repair rar
© 2006 Deutsche Grammophon | 00289 477 6443
Classical / Contemporary Classical / 20th Century / Avant-Garde / Modern Composition

Deutsche Grammophon's budget-priced, four-CD collection of all the works by György Ligeti in its catalog has many things to commend it, beginning with the title. Clear or Cloudy is a profoundly astute description of the composer's career, encompassing both the great sound clouds of his micropolyphonic work of the 1960s, such as Atmosphères, Volumina, Lux aeterna, and Lontano, and the crystalline clarity of his early years, demonstrated in Six Bagatelles for wind quintet and his first String Quartet, as well as in his Etudes pour piano and Piano Concerto from his final period.

This disc brings together the string quartets of György Ligeti, who died in 2006. They are played by the Béla Quartet, quite young yet already past masters in the interpretation of this music and especially appreciated for their work of precision and refinement, commitment, homogeneity and musicality. In their playing, energy and subtlety alternate constantly in an ongoing search for colours, harmonies, rhythms and contrasts. These two works of rare intensity, sometimes blazing brilliantly, allow for understanding how Ligeti's music, regardless of its complexity and rigour, can nonetheless appeal to a very broad public. Here, creation and daring are constant.

These chamber works bring Sony's adventurous, timely Ligeti series to a natural pinnacle. Long the challenger of stylistic stasis and customary demonstrations of excellence, Ligeti has outdone himself here (as he did with the fantastic Mechanical Music release). The Trio for Violin, Horn, and Piano (1982) challenges its players to stay in step with each other even while expanding virtuosity to the breaking point. Marie-Luise Neunecker plays such full horn parts that they roll flow over the tonal bounds, as does Saschko Gawriloff's violin and Pierre-Laurent Aimard's piano… –Andrew Bartlett..