Ligeti

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.

The Ensemble intercontemporain and its new music director Pierre Bleuse pay homage to György Ligeti, whose birth centenary we celebrated in 2023: ‘Ligeti is one of the greatest composers of the twentieth century and certainly one of those who first made a powerful aesthetic impact on me personally!… This recording, my very first with the Ensemble intercontemporain, which combines concertos and chamber music, highlights the EIC’s qualities as soloists and chamber musicians. And I’m not forgetting that Ligeti is an integral part of the repertoire of the Ensemble, which has performed his works extensively…

Ensemble Intercontemporain & Matthias Pintscher - Bartok & Ligeti (2015) {2CDs Alpha Classics}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 423 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 259 Mb
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© 2015 Alpha Classics / Outhere Music France | Alpha 217
Classical / Concerto / Sonata / Modern Composition

Alpha is launching a collaboration with the Ensemble Intercontemporain and its new artistic director, composer-conductor Matthias Pintscher. This new series will alternate 20th-century landmarks and new works, providing an opportunity to show to advantage the great quality of the EIC musicians in the major masterpieces of the last century and to discover scores by composers of the 21st century.

Ligeti’s interest in sonorities and instrumental timbres is well known. François-Xavier Roth and the musicians of Les Siècles, themselves true alchemists of sounds and colours, recorded shimmering interpretations of these three works in 2016, displaying unprecedented clarity and naturalness, and also tremendous humour. They have been superbly remastered for this reissue.

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.

One of the most intellectually fascinating recordings from recent years, getting beyond the creativity of programming is the fact that Jeremy Denk is such a superlative musician. These works all ring with technical finesse while simultaneously creating moments of beauty. A most satisfying recording!

This is the fourth recording by Patricia Kopatchinskaja on naïve; the second in the concerto repertoire. The collaboration with conductor/composer Peter Eötvos and the programme is an intense series of connections. Between Bartok, Ligeti, Eotvos and Kopatchinskaja, there are many links: Hungary, the land of the 3 composers featured; Peter Eötvos was the conductor of the first performance of the second version of Ligeti violin concerto, in 1992, with Ensemble Modern; Patricia Kopatchinakaja and Peter Eötvös have been working together for 4 years, performing several concertos, including those recorded here.

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.”