Search - Gyorgy Ligeti, Elisabeth Chojnacka, Zsigmond Szathmáry :: György Ligeti Edition 6: Keyboard Works (Piano, Harpsichord, Organ) - Irina Kataeva / Pierre-Laurent Aimard / Elisabeth Chojnacka / Zsigmond Szathmáry

Piano pieces are lesser works, but the rest is fantastic

Christopher Culver | 03/22/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Gyorgy Ligeti Edition 6 "Keyboard Works", a installment of Sony's attempt to present Ligeti's collected works, includes the composer's pieces for harpsichord and organ, as well as a number of piano works which were not previously included in Gyorgy Ligeti Edition 3 "Piano Works". As on that third volume, the piano works are performed by Pierre-Laurent Aimard, whom Ligeti considers the ideal pianist for his works, and this time accompanied by Irina Kataeva. Elisabeth Chojnacka performs on harpsicord, and Zsigmond Szathmary on organ.Some of "Five Pieces for Piano Four-Hands" are among the earliest of Ligeti's works, written when the composer was a mere 20 years old. All these early piano pieces are rather immature, a simple exploration of an instrument Ligeti encountered later in life than usual. Some, like "Three Wedding Dances" show much progress, but are rooted in peasant folk rhythms and bear little resemblance to the Ligeti of later years. I am a great fan of Ligeti, but frankly these first piano works are dull. One notable exception is the sequence "Capriccio No.1-Invention-Capriccio No. 2" which, although written in 1947, is reminiscent of Ligeti's superb "Musica Ricercata" series for piano featured on volume 3."Three Pieces for Two Pianos" dates from twenty-five years later, when Ligeti had already made his micropolyphonic breakthrough (and was in some cases beginning to abandon it). The halting, jerking "Monument" is, I think, the first appearance on this disc of the Ligeti we all know and love. "Selbstportrait mit Reich und Riley (und Chopin ist auch dabei)" is a tribute to the two American minimalist composers and includes a brief allusion to Chopin's music, which Ligeti considers protominimalist. It is indicated to be played "Presto: so schnell und so gleichmaessig wie moeglich", and Aimard and Kataeva really handle the unforgivingly flowing nature of the piece.The three harpsichord pieces are quite interesting because they are generally unknown. The highlight is "Hungarian Rock" (1978), a frenetic piece which sounds like video-game music gone horribly wrong. Chojnacka really shines here and on the following "Continuum" (1968), which in its eerie micropolyphony stands with the best of his works of the 1960's.Ligeti's organ pieces are subtle and I'm not sure I "get" them yet. "Ricercare" (1951) is Ligeti's first exploration of the instrument. "Harmonies" (1967) is rather reminiscent of the Ligeti's "Atmospheres" in its waves of sound and concentration on pure timbre, and the following "Coulee" continues this in a considerably higher range.The organ pieces, and the disc, end with "Volumina" (1961/62), one of Ligeti's earliest hits in the West. This is one of Ligeti's finest works, and the sound quality of this performance is much better than the 1968 recording recently reissued by Deutsche Grammaphon. (This is in itself surprising, as DG's reissues usually sound better than more recent recordings.) It might even be a better performance, as I find it difficult to judge the earlier recording because of its inaudibility.The booklet contains, as usual, notes written by Ligeti himself and, as always, they are full of enlightening anecdotes and humorous remarks. Here you can read about how the first rehearsal "Volumina" burnt out the organ of Gothenburg's cathedral, and how--in a parenthetical remark that could be dead serious or a joke--Ligeti "will be overcome by revenge fantasies" forever eagainst the repressive regimes of Hungary.While I think Ligeti is the greatest living composer, and the two series collecting his works are certainly worth getting, the unexciting piano pieces make this a lesser installment in Gyorgy Ligeti Edition. This should wait until one already has, for example, the first volume "String Quartets" or the second "A Capella Choral Works.""

It is Volume 6, after all...

trm | Basking Ridge, NJ USA | 07/03/2000

(3 out of 5 stars)

"OK. 3 stars ain't 5 stars. (I wish my early works rated 3 stars. I wish *any* of my work rated 3 stars...) But if you've made it through Volume 5 and the metronome piece, you must really be interested in the music of Ligeti. And of them all, this disk gives the clearest vision into the evolution of the masterworks like the horn trio, the piano etudes, the requiem.Like the early works of Nancarrow, these works don't predict *de facto* the later works, but hearing them *post facto* provides an understanding of the deep history, lineage, and the undeniable craft Ligeti called upon to build his revolutionary masterworks. Some of the tracks on this disc might have well been written by Bartok; even later Lizst is more "modern" than the Wedding Dances. But wade into the harspichord or 2 piano pieces, and you begin to hear the density of motivic impulse and timbral contrast (how is that possible on a harpsichord?) that matures in the Piano Etudes and Lontano. And, yes, Volumina has it's audience here. If you've ever played an organ that can depower it's bellows (try that on a Hammond B-3) you'll appreciate it even more than those just listening to the protogenesis of Luz Aeterna.Ligeti even acknowledges the influence of past and contemporary masters (Reich, Chopin), and this is what draws one to these works. We've all listened to the music of the Chopins, Bartoks, and Rileys; what in those works make them great?These tracks are Gyorgy Ligeti's answer to that question."

Ligeti's most important keyboard music

Michael Schell | www.schellsburg.com | 12/08/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This disk picks up most of the keyboard works that were not covered in LE3. Highlights here are Continuum, the pipe organ works, and the Three Pieces for Two Pianos.



Three Pieces was written toward the end of Ligeti's second style period. It continues in the vein of Ligeti's "metronome" works such as the not entirely serious Poème Symphonique and the very serious and astonishing third movement of the Second String Quartet. The influence of Nancarrow is also felt, though the dedication on the second movement is to the minimalists Reich and Riley (with the ending looking back to the last movement of Chopin's second piano sonata). Though I don't have the score to this work, I'm sure that the gripping account by Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Irina Kataeva is as precise as any other recorded version.



Together, Volumina and the two studies Harmonies and Coulée, make Ligeti one of the most significant 20th Century composers for the pipe organ. Granted, that isn't a very high bar to clear, since with the spectacular exception of Messiaen, "the beast" did not attract much attention from that century's major composers. All three of these works are from Ligeti's cluster and density period. Harmonies in particular is a delight to hear. In this recording Ligeti and organist Zsigmond Szathmáry deliberately disrupt the air flow through the bellows, thereby causing the pitch to slide. Yes, a portamento on a pipe organ. It's very interesting to compare this with Szathmáry previous recording on Wergo, which immediately follows Ligeti's 1957 tape piece Glissandi. In fact the Wergo CD is the only recording of Glissandi, and Harmonies, created ten years later, sounds on that CD like a continuation of the same track. It's remarkable how "electronic" the three organ pieces sound on that CD, juxtaposed with Glissandi and Artikulation. Meanwhile Coulée sounds very similar to Continuum, while Volumina is a classic study in density and masses of sound, perhaps the first timbrally-oriented composition for that instrument, and maybe Ligeti's only non-tape piece to use graphical notation. Szathmáry is to be commended for these interpretations, and my hat is also off to engineer Marcus Herzog for capturing the considerable dynamic range involved (pipe organs represent a particular recording challenge). Also interesting is an organ arrangement of the last movement from the early album Musica Ricercata. This excerpt, a homage to Frescobaldi, seems to work best in this organ version, the sustained sounds of the grand instrument emphasizing the archaic sounding counterpoint.



When the list of the 20th Century's miniature masterpieces is compiled, Continuum will be there alongside works like Ionization and General William Booth Enters into Heaven. This difficult and influential work from 1968 requires three minutes of almost constant trills and tremolos (notated as eighth notes in strict tempo, but played very fast). As the moto perpetuo unfolds, Ligeti alters the groupings of notes to create the illusion of changing meter and tempo, even though the underlying eighth note pulse stays constant. Often the tempos that your ear calculates are layered, creating the appearance of polymeters. It's a unique approach to the rhythmic minimalism that was also being nurtured by American composers in the 1960s and 1970s. My favorite recording of Continuum is Eva Nordwall's 1976 offering on Bis (the one with the strange cover photo of Ligeti biting his finger), but Elisabeth Chojnacka's performance will certainly do. I assume that she, like Nordwall, is using a modern harpsichord with 4', 8' and 16' pitch. Ligeti, along with Carter, Albright and others, was certainly one of the postmodern composers who most successfully reclaimed the harpsichord as a contemporary instrument, though the original trailblazer was Falla in his harpsichord concerto and Master Peter's Puppet Play. If you can read music, track down the worthy analysis of Continuum by Emilios Cambouropoulos and Costas Tsougras, which is available online as I write this in December 2009. Note how the work starts with a tonally ambiguous oscillation on a minor third (G and B-flat), a common Ligeti device from that time as evinced by the last movement of the Second String Quartet, the second movement of the Double Concerto, and the eighth of the Ten Pieces for Wind Quintet (LE7). Extra notes are added to create an undulating chromatic cluster. Then a B major triad is sounded, the only occurrence of a conventional tonal chord. Now it's back to chromatic clusters, the two hands separating until the climatic passage with all the courses engaged. The harmony here is based on tritones for the only time in the piece: F-B-F in the left hand and G-C#-G in the right hand. The Gs go up chromatically until they get to B, while the Fs descend to C#, leaving us with just B and C#. With a clang, the octaves are sounded one last time and allowed to ring out while the trilling resumes on just the B/C# dyad in the upper register. A cluster extends up from there, then notes are gradually dropped out leaving only a tremolo on high E which suggests a dominant/tonic relationship with the B major chord heard earlier.



There are two more harpsichord pieces from the relatively fallow years between Le Grand Macabre (completed in 1977) and the first of Ligeti's late works (the neoclassical horn trio, completed in 1982). One of these, the Hungarian Passacaglia, is interesting for its use of just intonation. Rounding out the album is a selection of piano pieces from Ligeti's early years in Hungary. These are of minor interest.



Missing from both LE3 and LE6 are the last three Piano Etudes (which had not yet been composed), the Three Bagatelles for Piano written for David Tudor in 1961, and the early Chromatic Fantasy that Ligeti withdrew. Unfortunately these aren't present in Teldec's Ligeti Project either, so to assemble a complete Ligeti collection you'll need to supplement the Sony and Teldec series with something like Fredrik Ullén's album of Ligeti's complete piano music.



UPDATE March 2010: Sony has made the entire Ligeti Edition series available in an inexpensive nine-CD box set that includes this CD, so you should probably just buy that set instead of this single CD if you're interested in Ligeti's music."