György Ligeti Edition 7: Chamber Music (Trio for Violin, Horn & Piano; Ten Pieces; Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet; Sonata for Solo Viola) - Saschko Gawriloff / Marie-Luise Neunecker / Pierre-Laurent Aimard / London Winds / Tabea Zimmermann

György Ligeti (Composer), London Winds (Orchestra), Saschko Gawriloff (Performer), Marie-Luise Neunecker (Performer), Pierre-Laurent Aimard (Performer), Tabea Zimmermann (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Saschko Gawriloff, Marie-Luise Neunecker, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Tabea Zimmermann
• Orchestra: London Winds
• Composer: György Ligeti
• Audio CD (January 20, 1998)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Sony Classical
• ASIN: B0000029P1
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #468,675 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Trio: I. Andantino Con Tenerezza - Saschko Gawriloff/Marie-Luise Neunecker/Pierre-Laurent Aimard

2. Trio: II. Vivacissimo Molto Ritmico - Saschko Gawriloff/Marie-Luise Neunecker/Pierre-Laurent Aimard

3. Trio: III. Alla Marcia - Saschko Gawriloff/Marie-Luise Neunecker/Pierre-Laurent Aimard

4. Trio: IV. Lamento, Adagio - Saschko Gawriloff/Marie-Luise Neunecker/Pierre-Laurent Aimard

5. Ten Pieces: I. Molto Sostenuto E Calmo

6. Ten Pieces: II. Prestissimo Minaccioso E burlesco

7. Ten Pieces: III. Lento

8. Ten Pieces: IV. Prestissimo Leggiero E Virtuoso

9. Ten Pieces: V. Presto Staccatissimo E Leggiero

10. Ten Pieces: VI. Presto Staccatissimo E Leggiero

11. Ten Pieces: VII. Vivo, Energico

12. Ten Pieces: VIII. Allegro Con Delicatezza

13. Ten Pieces: IX. Sostenuto, Stridente

14. Ten Pieces: X. Presto Bizzarro E Rubato, So Schnell Wie Moglich

15. Six Bagatelles: I. Allegro Con Spirito

16. Six Bagatelles: II. Rubato, Lamentoso

17. Six Bagatelles: III. Allegro Grazioso

18. Six Bagatelles: IV. Presto Ruvido

19. Six Bagatelles: V. Adagio, Mesto

20. Six Bagatelles: VI. Molto Vivace, Capriccioso

See all 26 tracks on this disc

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars three excellent chamber works and one good work., January 11, 2005

By 

Lord Chimp (Monkey World) - See all my reviews

This review is from: György Ligeti Edition 7: Chamber Music (Trio for Violin, Horn & Piano; Ten Pieces; Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet; Sonata for Solo Viola) - Saschko Gawriloff / Marie-Luise Neunecker / Pierre-Laurent Aimard / London Winds / Tabea Zimmermann (Audio CD)

The seventh Sony Ligeti Edition disc compiles four works covering very different periods and compositional paradigms. Three of these pieces are amazing, marvelous avant-garde works deserving high acclaim among the upper ranks of Ligeti's works. The other piece, _Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet_ was written in Communist Hungary and it largely obliges the requirements of "Soviet realism" at the time. The sixth bagatelle was not originally performed because of excessive dissonance, but on the whole, while conventional, they are interesting in the way they fuse different folk idioms.

For the same ensemble are _Ten Pieces for Wind Quintet_ from 1968. Like Ligeti's second string quartet, it explores Ligeti's micropolyphony style for small chamber group. The pieces range from half a minute to two and a half minutes, and the array of expression is equally great as the previously mentioned quartet. Five of the pieces are mini-concerto pieces for each performer, and these are balanced by five organic ensemble pieces.

Then comes _Trio for Violin, Horn, and Piano_, from 1982. Labyrinthine meshes of disparate ideas mesh together here for one of Ligeti's most captivating and emotionally resonant chamber works. From the eerily ironic, liquidy opening movement to overlapping rhythms of the second and third movements, the final, whispering adagio, this piece alone justifies purchasing this disc.

Sonata for Solo Viola is a beautiful piece where Ligeti uses non-tonal harmony and mutant tunings. One of Ligeti's greatest strengths seems to be writing for solo instruments. Even the early cello sonata is a great piece. Anyway, the sonata is deeply unusual, original, and emotionally evocative. Another masterful work.

The Ligeti Edition series is now out of print, so I suggest you try and find them posthaste.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Four chamber works of immense diversity, August 3, 2006

By 

Christopher Culver - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: György Ligeti Edition 7: Chamber Music (Trio for Violin, Horn & Piano; Ten Pieces; Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet; Sonata for Solo Viola) - Saschko Gawriloff / Marie-Luise Neunecker / Pierre-Laurent Aimard / London Winds / Tabea Zimmermann (Audio CD)

This Sony disc, the seventh of the "Gyorgy Ligeti Edition" series of the composer's collected works in performances overseen by Ligeti himself, presents four pieces from four very different parts of his career. The performers are virtuosos, violinist Saschko Gawriloff, the composer's favourite pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, his preferred horn player Marie-Luise Neunecker, Tabea Zimmerman on viola, and the London Winds quintet.

First up chronologically are the "Six Bagatelles" for wind quintet (1953). Those who know Ligeti's eleven-piece "Musica Ricercata" for solo piano will find these quite familiar. The piano work was written when Ligeti decided to totally revise his compositional technique and embrace total chromaticism. However, he couldn't expect all of it to be played publically in Stalinist Hungary, so he arranged six of the more innocuous parts for wind quintet. (Only five appeared at the premiere, as the sixth had too many minor seconds.) These are delightful arrangements, retaining the strong dramatic potential of the piano work but expanding its timbres through Klangefarbemelodien.

The "Ten Pieces" for wind quintet (1968) come from Ligeti's middle period, marked by "micropolyphony", orchestral texture so thick that individual voices disappear in an intricate web of sound. The soundworld here reminds me very much of the String Quartet No. 2 and of "Lontano" for orchestra, both composed around the same time. The material here, however, is much sparser, perhaps too thin. Ligeti writes in the liner notes that these pieces are meant to explore interference tones, but that the effect of this disappears on CD, which is to be regretted.

The "Trio for violin, horn and piano" (1982) came after a five-year silence when Ligeti, like many other composers, was looking for new directions after Darmstadt modernism was perceived as superceded. What resulted was a shock to all who followed Ligeti's work up to that point. The ghostliness of micropolyphony is gone entirely, replaced instead by sort of wistfullness, and an interest in individual instrumental lines. The piano here requires an abandonment of microtones, and in terms of style the part often channels Bill Evans. A quotation from Beethoven (the "Les adieux" sonata) provided a seed for the work, and the form is traditional. There's also the birth of a fascinating with rhythm, that was to become a major part of the Etudes pour piano and the Piano Concerto. Indeed, the second movement of the Trio went on to become the fourth Etudes, "Fanfares".

A major feature of Ligeti's final period was not prefigured in the Horn Trio, however. Another, however, was unison of all his modern language with the simple music of his village childhood, creating a postmodern fusion much like that of Berio (though the Italian heritage of Berio was quite different than Ligeti's Transylvanian upbringing). The "Sonata for Solo Viola" (1991-94), written for Tabea Zimmerman, exhibits this simultaneously old and new style. Essentially six different pieces collected together, the sonata features both melodies organized from overtones, from Ligeti's knowledge of music from Maramures in Romania, and chromaticism. Even in the parts that sound simple and folksy still tax even virtuosi, and the way in which Ligeti exploits some of the peculiar properties of the viola is fascinating.

If I give this less than five stars, it is only because I favour Ligeti's orchestral efforts. Still, the "Horn Trio" makes this an essential recording for understanding Ligeti's evolution as a composer, and all in all, I recommend all volumes of the "Gyorgy Ligeti Edition".

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ligeti's second tier is better than most musicians' first tier, December 10, 2009

By 

Michael Schell (www.schellsburg.com) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: György Ligeti Edition 7: Chamber Music (Trio for Violin, Horn & Piano; Ten Pieces; Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet; Sonata for Solo Viola) - Saschko Gawriloff / Marie-Luise Neunecker / Pierre-Laurent Aimard / London Winds / Tabea Zimmermann (Audio CD)

This is the last installment of Ligeti Edition before Le Grand Macabre, and it focuses on chamber music other than string quartets. The 1982 horn trio is the first of Ligeti's late period neoclassical works, and is far more conventional in style and form than his sound surface works of the 1950s through 1970s. Ligeti can't resist throwing some quirks in though: he calls for the violin and horn to play in just intonation while the piano remains in equal temperament. You hear this clash most clearly in the slow forth movement (what seems "out of tune" is how it's supposed to sound), which reminds me of the last of Ives' Three Quarter-Tone Pieces, which is itself a slow chorale. After Ligeti brings the movement to a climax, the violin and horn sustain notes at the extremes of their registers, recalling a similar passage in the last movement of the Second String Quartet (though the effect is somewhat undermined by the horn's inability to indefinitely sustain a pedal tone). Throughout, Ligeti emphasizes a descending me-re-do motive borrowed from Beethoven's "Les Adieux" sonata that's also used by Copland in the slow finale of his adventuresome piano quartet, which this horn trio also reminds me of.

I was an oboist in a previous life, and I remember how the wind quintet has been relegated to the minor leagues of traditional chamber ensembles in the estimation of many musicians. It's true that this particular assembly of five relatively heterogeneous instruments based on little more than their longstanding taxonomic association has produced little in the way of first-rate music. There's nothing prior to the 20th Century for this ensemble that need concern anyone other than a wind player. And even the repertory from the 20th Century onward consists largely of offerings by minor composers. Most of the great ones overlooked the medium, even if, as in the case of Stravinsky and Varèse, they otherwise enjoyed writing for winds alone. Even when a first rate composer like Schoenberg or Elliott Carter did begrudge us a quintet, the results have usually been disappointing. There's Hindemith's Kleine Kammermusik and Stockhausen's underappreciated gem Adieu to offer hope, and happily we also have Ligeti's Ten Pieces. These aren't the quality of the Second String Quartet or the Chamber Concerto, but there's still a lot here of interest. Movements five and six, with their rapid repeated notes, are reminiscent of Xenakis' Akraka, as well as Ligeti's other "metronome" pieces (like the third movement of the Second String Quartet). Movement eight uses minor third tremolos like the last movements of the Second String Quartet and Double Concerto. The Ten Pieces are very troublesome to play: Ligeti annoyingly demands that the oboist double on both English horn and oboe d'amore, which splits an awfully fine timbral hair and leaves you with three different instruments to try to keep warmed up. And you must have a pretty fast tongue to play some of the staccato passages as written. As a result they're seldom heard in performance. This is too bad, especially as regards the ninth piece, which attempts to explore difference tones heard within your inner ear when you hear two loud pitches very close in frequency, an effect that really works only when you hear the work live (it's largely lost in this recording).

Also featured here are the Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet. An arrangement of parts of the early Musica Ricercata album (see LE3), they revert to the mediocre standard of most wind quintets music. Sadly, being far easier on both players and listeners, but possessing the same name recognition, the Bagatelles get performed a lot more frequently than the Ten Pieces.

Last on the CD is the eclectic solo viola sonata from Ligeti's late period. It has some striking moments, such as the end of the first movement where as the viola ascends, the bowing goes to sul ponticello, then to just bowing noise before fading out. The presto is also remarkable, written and performed in a way that makes it hard to believe there's only one instrument playing. The combination a fast tempo, loud dynamic marking AND a mute is quite unusual for this instrument. The last movement is a chaconne that wouldn't be out of place in an anthology of Britten's music.

It's probably fair to say that LE7 contains none of Ligeti's greatest works, but it does have some fine music, competently played, and is a worthwhile addition to any music lover's library even if you're not a confirmed Ligeti fan.

Note that as of 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 one if you're interested in Ligeti's music.