György Ligeti

All Music Guide
Among contemporary music ensembles, perhaps none is more ambitious or daring than the brilliant Arditti String Quartet, which presents three virtuosic modernist works on this Wigmore Hall Live release. The metric complexities of Conlon Nancarrow's short, etude-like "String Quartet No. 3" (1987) test the player's rhythmic precision and linear independence, while the ensemble's cohesion and balance are challenged in the 12 epigrammatic sections of Henri Dutilleux's "String Quartet, Ainsi la Nuit" (1973-1976). But while both of these works are undeniably impressive for the great difficulties they present, the tour de force of this recording is György Ligeti's enormously demanding "String Quartet No. 2" (1968), a masterpiece of extended string techniques and sonorities that is a bold continuation of the explorations of Béla Bartók; yet this work is an intense musical experience in its own right, for all the stark contrasts of material and fantastic experimentation. Listening to this disc in one sitting can be invigorating or exhausting, depending on one's experience and inclination toward avant-garde string quartet music; since the density of detail is high, there is a lot to absorb here, and all three string quartets require the sharpest attention. Yet the Arditti String Quartet is a superb guide to these uncompromising pieces, and the group's exuberance and phenomenal playing undoubtedly made this April 9, 2005, concert enjoyable for its audience. The reproduction is remarkably vibrant and almost palpable in its presence.

—Blair Sanderson

For her tenth Deutsche Grammophon release, pianist Alice Sara Ott returns to the music of Frédéric Chopin. She approaches Chopin’s 24 Préludes op. 28 from a fresh perspective, finding a personal thread that parallels the music’s dramatic arc and wide-ranging moods. The pianist frames the Préludes within a contemporary context by interspersing them with seven works by 20th- and 21st-century composers.

For it's first recording for BIS Records, the Marmen Quartet tackles three major works from the twentieth-century string quartet literature. The two quartets by Gyorgy Ligeti belong to two different periods in the composer's output. Written before Ligeti left Hungary and emigrated to the West, the First, subtitled 'Metamorphoses nocturnes', represents the peak of his 'Hungarian' period. Regarded as a virtuoso exercise, the work reveals the influences of Bela Bartok, particularly from his Third and Fourth Quartets.

For it's first recording for BIS Records, the Marmen Quartet tackles three major works from the twentieth-century string quartet literature. The two quartets by Gyorgy Ligeti belong to two different periods in the composer's output. Written before Ligeti left Hungary and emigrated to the West, the First, subtitled 'Metamorphoses nocturnes', represents the peak of his 'Hungarian' period. Regarded as a virtuoso exercise, the work reveals the influences of Bela Bartok, particularly from his Third and Fourth Quartets.

This trio recording came out six years after the fact. Recorded in 1996 and slated for a 1998 release on K'EY Records, it was buried together with the label and finally unearthed in 2002 by Ecstatic Yod. And ecstatic it is: Greg Goodman, Henry Kaiser, and Lukas Ligeti deliver an overwhelming 79 minutes of energy-driven free improvisation. Kaiser shifts from track to track between his bass and acoustic and electric guitars. Goodman stays mostly on piano keys, but he also explores the instrument's bowels. As for Ligeti, he propels the group in a non-generic way, locking into a jagged avant-prog beat one minute, bursting into ecstatic jazz-style free form the next.

Musical interpretation changes overtime, as does the response it elicits. Undoubt edly the 44 Duos for Two Violins have gained in standing - have perhaps even been ennobled - since great violinists have been programming them in concert. But a further reason these little pieces are listened to differently today - as artworks sui generis - is that many of these miniatures provide such blissful relief from the countless garrulous works of our time. And in their overwhelming lucidity, they also consign both hypertrophic musical actionism and the so-called "new simplicity" to the place they deserve: namely, to the order of fashionable musical trends.

from the attached booklet

Only one year and a half after their first meeting in Budapest in early 1905, Bartók and Kodály were eager to jointly publish their first settings of Hungarian folk songs. In their foreword to the volume Magyar népdalok (Hungarian Folk Songs), they declare their goal thus: “…to get the general public to know and appreciate folk songs.”