Ligeti - Violin & Piano Concertos, Concert Romanesc
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Label: Harmonia Mundi
Cat No: HMM905382
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 1
Genre: Orchestral
Release Date: 30th May 2025
Contents
Works
Aus der Ferne III for string quartetAus der Ferne V for string quartet
Concert romanesc
Piano Concerto
Violin Concerto
Artists
Isabelle Faust (violin)Jean-Frederic Neuburger (piano)
Les Siecles
Conductor
Francois-Xavier RothWorks
Aus der Ferne III for string quartetAus der Ferne V for string quartet
Concert romanesc
Piano Concerto
Violin Concerto
Artists
Isabelle Faust (violin)Jean-Frederic Neuburger (piano)
Les Siecles
Conductor
Francois-Xavier RothAbout
The poetics of space and the art of time, high-precision mechanism, rhythmic exhilaration ... Ligeti’s music defies criteria and codes. This recording provides an opportunity to assess the evolution of the musical language of one of the twentieth century’s greatest composers, from the early Concert Românesc to the later concertos for piano and violin, performed here by two fabulous virtuosi.
Sound/Video
Paused
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1Violin Concerto: 1. Praeludium. Vivacissimo luminoso
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2Violin Concerto: 2. Aria – Hoquetus – Choral. Andante con moto
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3Violin Concerto: 3. Intermezzo. Presto fluido
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4Violin Concerto: 4. Passacaglia. Lento intenso
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5Violin Concerto: 5. Appassionato. Agitato molto
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6Kurtág: Aus der Ferne III
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7Concert Românesc: 1. Andantino
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8Concert Românesc: 2. Allegro vivace
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9Concert Românesc: 3. Adagio ma non troppo
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10Concert Românesc: 4. Molto vivace
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11Kurtág: Aus der Ferne V
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12Piano Concerto: 1. Vivace molto ritmico e preciso
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13Piano Concerto: 2. Lento e deserto
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14Piano Concerto: 3. Vivace cantabile
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15Piano Concerto: 4. Allegro risoluto, molto ritmico
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16Piano Concerto: 5. Presto luminoso
Europadisc Review
Few if any members of the post-war avant garde have had such widespread dissemination as György Ligeti (1923–2006). Partly thanks to its use in two films by Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey and The Shining), Ligeti’s music is known to many people who may even be unaware of its composer. But Ligeti was never comfortable with orthodoxies, even of the radical avant garde. Having survived (unlike many of his family) the horrors of the Nazi persecution of Hungarian Jews, he then fled his homeland when the Soviets brutally suppressed the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. His refusal to be straitjacketed by any system, whether political or musical, led to some of the most thrillingly imaginative and unorthodox musical works of the last six decades, works in which razor-sharp absurdism rubs shoulders with what has rightly been referred to as ‘existential tension’.
The sheer variety encompassed by Ligeti’s music – its embrace of a vast range of historical and geographic influences, as well as its capacity to evoke space and depth, rather than processive, goal-oriented form – is brilliantly illustrated by a new disc of three of his concertos, made by the musicians of Les Siècles during the composer’s centenary year. At its centre is the Concert Românesc (1951) for modest-sized orchestra, rooted in Ligeti’s own 1949/50 researches into Romanian folk music and instruments, from which grew his fascination with non-classical scales, harmonies and timbres.
From today’s perspective the music of the Concert Românesc may seem charming, but it contains modernist harmonic ‘transgressions’ that were not to the liking of the Communist authorities, and it lay unperformed until 1971. The third of its four movements (which are played without a break) is an Adagio in which the horns play entirely in natural tuning (i.e. without using their valves); this and the soulful cor anglais solo give the work a distinctly bucolic feel, while the final movement has all the freshness of Bartók at his most energetic. Under François-Xavier Roth’s vibrant yet secure direction, the musicians of Les Siècles give a gripping performance, constantly alive to the music’s folk roots and finely nuanced timbres.
Opening the disc is the five-movement Violin Concerto (1993), which evokes not just different historical periods (in its movement titles as well as its textures), but also folk music from eastern Europe and the wider world. This extends to unusual tuning systems and instruments (ocarinas and swanee whistles), and the work is a tour de force, cramming into its 28-minute span a kaleidoscopic array of techniques and effects that continued to fascinate Ligeti throughout his compositional maturity. Over the last three decades this work has earned a place as one of the supreme 20th-century challenges for violinists, and there have been several fine recordings, notably by Saschko Gawriloff (its dedicatee and first performer) and the mercurial Patricia Kopatchinskaja.
This new account features Isabelle Faust, who adds to her considerable discography on the Harmonia Mundi label with a performance that combines devilish virtuosity with remarkable textural clarity, in which she is matched all the way by Les Siècles. No detail seems to escape these musicians, whether the intentionally disorienting tuning, the sense of suspended time, or the edge-of-seat feel to the third and final movements. Yet the grasp of the whole is never compromised, that sense of the vast range of Ligeti’s uniquely personal universe being captured in concentrated form. The cadenza which forms the culmination of the last movement is by Oscar Strasnoy and Faust herself, and it caps an extraordinary performance which stands up with the very best.
Another work which reflects many of Ligeti’s abiding concerns is the Piano Concerto (1985–88), which particularly evokes the world of the first book of piano Études and the mechanistic, clockwork textures and tiny motivic cells that fascinated the composer. Here, Roth and Les Siècles are joined by soloist Jean-Frédéric Neuburger, in a performance which – like that of the Violin Concerto – is very much a collegial affair, with the soloist first among equals rather than an overpowering virtuoso. This is another five-movement work, one in which strange modes are combined with a compelling but unpredictable rhythmic vitality and whirling vortices. Amid the often frenetic activity, the slow second movement (marked Lento e deserto) takes on a haunting plaintiveness tinged with echoes of folk lamentations, building to an anguished cry which is extraordinarily powerful.
Placed in between the three concertos are two pieces by Ligeti’s Hungarian contemporary György Kurtág (now in his hundredth year). Isabelle Faust joins string soloists from the orchestra in Aus der Ferne III and V, the first a curiously hypnotic series of harmonic and melodic scraps, the second (with a similarly tolling backdrop) developed from a small chromatic cell. Even more than Ligeti, Kurtág is a master of the miniature that seems to contain a world in itself, as well as a similar distrust of received orthodoxies. These two small pieces perfectly complement the larger works which they punctuate. It all adds up to an exceptionally satisfying album, recorded with ideal focus and balance. For a single-disc coupling of three of Ligeti’s most compelling concertos, this is hard to beat: do try it!
Reviews
It’s no surprise that the violin concerto particularly has been taken up by a number of soloists, or that Isabelle Faust should have wanted to add her reading to the series she has made for Harmonia Mundi. It is a typical Faust performance, perceptive, technically immaculate, and just a little on the cool side, and it’s paired with an equally accomplished, if a little more mechanical, account of the piano work with Jean-Frédéric Neuburger as soloist. Andrew ClementsThe Guardian 6 June 2025
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