Search - Pierre Boulez, Franco Donatoni :: György Ligeti: Etudes for Piano, Book 1 (1985) / Trio for Violin, Horn & Piano (1982) / Franco Donatoni: Tema, for 12 Instruments (1982) / Cadeau, for 11 Instruments (1984) - Ensemble InterContemporain, Pierre Boulez

Powerful disk of post-modernity

scarecrow | Chicago, Illinois United States | 01/19/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a powerful disk not so much for the First Book of Ligeti's seminal "Etudes",but the Ensemble Intercontemporain's playing two exciting works by Franco Donatoni. Donatoni was a late bloomer,early he dabbled in the fashion concepts of the avant-garde, graphic notation and pointillistic gestures,fast,clipped threadbare lines, arrays of intervallic configurations. He went through a period of seminal solo works as well, "Nidi", for piccolo solo, "Ali" for Viola solo. But when he turned to chamber settings as these two pieces here for 11 instruments, mixed winds and strings his voice blossums into full register. His aesthetic strategy is to keep a combustible high energy level at work, with a focused clarity of line that is nothing but "magical" also interesting profoundly exciting. The performance here is a rendering of clarity situated within razor-sharp sonorities displayed, timbres with a biting penetration. Donatoni's music has this Mediterranean spirit,the love of life sensuality,soft breezes hanging out on beaches for its visual import as well natural and human.



The Ligeti Trio after Brahms is also a great work. It was indeed a challenge to write something effective for this un-godly, un-romantic combination; Violin, French Horn & Piano. The music materials for one movement here is retreaded from the "Etudes", the folksy-like scale c,d,e,f#,g#,a#,b played incessantly over and over again yet with shifting emphasis. Ligeti has a marvelous sense of timbre, where the piano is utilized as a coloristic role, not really acconpaniment, that would have been rather boring, all three instruments sort of hold their own, they have their own materials, and registers. The post-modernity here must be in the "playfulness", in that since modernity, the high dimensions have played themselves out, its agendas compromised, now composers simply write what excites them as here on this disk. Ligeti's late style has come to be dominated by the "etude", his "Piano Concerto", and "Violin Concerto" are cut from this pathway, incessant rhythms, forever expanding scales and filigrees of tones, and a prestississimo tempo, break neck, as fast as possible at times.



The "piano etudes" have been well-described in other places ad infinitum, ad nauseum to a degree. There are dozens of clones of this music, younger composers seem to have been re-introduced to this genre from Ligeti of the Eighties, the highest form of compliment, from a master. Each etude exploits a timbre, one a New Age sustained timbre, another the scale previously mentioned in the Trio, another where the struck tones excites those keys silently depressed. Aimard interpretively simply owns these "Etudes" he has played them innumerable times,and has a good sense of not overstepping interpretive boundaries rendering a centrist like reading. The work really doesn't allow much performative freedom anyway, still when contemplating a piece of music one always feels that it represents something more than simply one single solitary way of interpretation. The music materials here seem to leave modernity in the margins with a sense of commentary on explicit obvious materials, scales,onward continuous moving rhythms, materials that really leave no room for anything,the music simply is what it is and doesn't suggest anything else. Derrida has said that of current philosophy,or interpretations whatever is here and now, is what is, there is nothing beyond it."