classical music:

	György Ligeti Edition 3: Works for Piano (Etudes, Musica Ricercata) - Pierre-Laurent Aimard Gyorgy Ligeti, Pierre-Laurent Aimard Sony, 1997 average customer review:based on 20 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

This music is very different from Ligeti's mostly static soundscapes of the 1960s ("Atmospheres," "Lux Aeterna" et al.). The rhythmic complexities are amazing: Ligeti cites the polyphony of African music, the player-piano inventions of Conlon Nancarrow, and the jazz pianism of Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans as influences. The motoric power grabs you right away, and the pieces are so vividly descriptive I almost think I could guess what inspired them without knowing their titles. "Vertige" for instance with its fast and queasy up-and-down motion; "Desordre" with its dense layering and extreme violence; "Galamb Borong" (2 pseudo-Javanese words) which evokes the sound of the gamelan; "L'escalier du Diable", a spiral staircase that goes nowhere fast; "Infinite Column", a 2-minute rocket into the stratosphere.

This recording by Pierre-Laurent Aimard ranks just behind Glenn Gould's second assault on the "Goldberg Variations" as my favorite solo piano record.

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Wow!

I wonder what is the source of the magical inspiration capable of producing this music. Ligeti is a genius of our time. I will not add anything more to the interesting reviews published in this page. Only to say that the music of Ligeti (Grand Macabre, Requiem, Adventures, Concertos,...) offers a unique musical experience for those who love contemporary music. For those who not, Ligeti is, maybe the best great composer to introduce them in the music of our time. From this album (Bravo Aimard!), the Etudes are the outstanding part. "Autumn in Varsovia" (which has the astonishing indication of "Presto cantabile") "Disordre", "Galamb Borong", are pieces which will remembered in the future. Music for the memory and the history of music.

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Dexterity,persistence,elegance,brutality and playfullness

I can easily see these "Etudes" entering permanent piano repertoire, especially the "First Etude" with its crossing of two against three incessant relentless velocity,almost tiresome, well it grates on your nerves. The avant-garde still lurks. The "Second Etude" is a dabblling curiosity with New Age gestures and the "Third" utilizes harmonics,yet the fingers still hits an already lowered key, a percussive thud results.The "Fourth" "Fanfares" a nodding tribute to Ligeti's one-time native Hungary, just like Chopin, some distance, here, continuous scales in rhythms of three, two, three dance-like with trumpet like treble flourishes. These works are a far cry from his spellbinding "Lux Aeterna" for unaccompanied voices, or better yet the powerful orchestral bright fields in "Atmospheres". Yet you find, a musical language now at play, and right at home in tampering with the categories of postmodernity in visiting the nostalgia for a lost past.Aimard knocks the hell out of these works with the right amount of playfullness and seriousness simultaneously.

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A great work of art.

Ligeti is one of the most interesting contemporary composers. His music is so strong and powerful, and sometimes magical. I have never studied music and I don't even read music, but I can hear how exceptional this music is. It also proves that contemporary music is not just for musicians.


etude genre wearing conceptually thin now

I have some trouble with this last late great period of Ligeti. The First Book of Etudes was a stroke, and still remains an impressive response toward the problematics of creativity, the hovering around serious musics, the various nefarious threats, conceptually or otherwise of giving in to the temptations of this expressive plurality, of harboring the nice, complaisant felicity of the popular universe,like placing your head after a days toil on the breast of your mistress.So many composers have lapsed into this state. The impressive First Book of Etudes ran out past itself,transcended itself. And the genre of the Etude as long been neglected in this century. Well Rorem's and Bolcom's sets are not terribly interesting.But here Ligeti with some quite original timbral utilizations,breaks from the fold, as in touches bloques, depressing down certain piano tones silently,allowing the struke tones to excite the sympathetic overtones. Yet Ligeti proceeds one step further, allowing the struke finger against the piano key to remain part of the musical percussive phrase. Quite striking!. The Fanfares as well, the Hungarian or scale garnered somewheres from Eastern Europe, C-D-E-F#-G#-A#-B, this is heard incessantly over 'n over again, with accompaniment two notes chords, sometimes three note chords, placed congruently or not on two or three divisions of this dance-like scale. A movement from his also fascinating Horn Trio ( a tribute to Brahms) also yanks this same identical scale. There's also some suggestions of New Age timbres here,and the demonic, the latter etudes from this First Book. But now the Second Book, seems to up the anti, faster unhumanly fast, as#7 the tempo indication is "Vivacissimo luminoso, legato possibile, Etude # 8 Vivace risoluto, Etude #9 Prestissimo, and in a note preceeding this etude, Ligeti indicates " So fast that the individual notes, even without pedal, almost melt into continuous lines. All this speed,and fury seem one dimensional, despite the fact that Ligeti did for this Second Book identify fascinating images,also with a host of dedications of friends, pianists fellow composers, as Mauricio Kagel, Volker Banfield, Aimard himself. Vincent Meyer, two dedications. For his fellow at one time compatriot Gyorgy Kurtag, Ligeto slows down the pace here, and reserves the "En Suspens" for the eminence grise of Kurtag. This Etude # 11 exploits the age old polytonal world, very simple like and touching. These etudes as time wears on them seem so valuable now for purely pedagogical import. Perhaps Competition acadmia pieces. So much for music. Needless to say Aimard plays the hell out of these etudes. He has a fine reserved sense of allowing the pieces to speak for themselves, almost becoming machine like.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4

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