Customer Reviews

György Ligeti: Kammerkonzert; Ramifications; Lux aeterna; Atmosphères

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This is arguably one of the most important collections of Ligeti's works now available. The Ligeti Edition never got around to his orchestral works before it was terminated by Sony! "Atmospheres" from 1961 is hard to find anywhere else, and it was one of Ligeti's breakthrough works. An abbreviated version is the first track on the "2001" soundtrack, but it is complete here in a 1966 recording. "Lux Aeterna," also made widely known by Kubrick's film, is here in its original 1966 recording. The other works, the "Chamber Concerto" of 1969-70 and two versions of "Ramifications" from 1968-69 (one for string ensemble and one for full orchestra), are wilder and more diverse than "Atmospheres" and "Lux Aeterna," expanding Ligeti's sound world into multiple dimensions! All in all an essential collection from one of the 20th century's leading composers. Wergo followed this with the "Cello Concerto/San Francisco Polyphony" disc, and together they capture Ligeti's pioneering orchestral works from the late 50s through the early 70s.

This disc is a digest of various recordings of Ligeti's works made by Wergo in the 60's and 70's. So - first thing to note - these are all taken from analogue masters. The recordings of the Chamber Concerto and the two versions of Ranmifications still sound good, particularly the last movement of the Concerto, which has precisely the right "sparkling" quality the piece demands. Lux Aeterna and Atmospheres are amongst the infamous recordings used by Stanley Kubrick in "2001: A space Odyssey". The former stands up well. However, the very noticeable edit towards the end of Atmospheres is definitely absent from the original vinyl release of the movie soundtrack, and I can only surmise that the engineers have tried, ineptly, to cover up some damage to the master tape. You can't fool us, boys and girls! On the whole, though, a worthwhile reissue of some of the premier recordings of groundbreaking 20th-century music.

Chamber concerto for thirteen players: First of all I am not an expert in contemporary music or so not very well called the music of the last quarter of the twentieth century, but what I remember when I was a child (ten years or less) I was very pleasing impressed with two different kind of the music I listened in the film "2001 A space Odyssey" The first one was of course the beginning of "Also sprach Zarathustra" of Richard Strauss, and the second one was the music which concerns to the rest of the film. Believe me I did not know until some years ago that this music was composed by this magisterial Hungarian- Austrian composer Gyorgi Ligeti.

The Chamber Concerto for 13 players is conceived for Flute, Oboe, 2 clarinets, Horn, Trombone, clavicembalo, pianoforte, and the five sections of strings, but the all structure of the concert is very complicated, it is totally different what one can expect the sound with the same orchestra playing a post romantic style, even more, in a modern style also. What is more remarkable is the many layered structure of the rhythms and the stretching of the pitches in the notes up and down, mixing together, making clusters etc. As an orchestrator Ligeti is a true master, the sounds of an individual instrument is completely lost, neither of them could shine alone by it selves but all together or at least by a sections of them, or taking samples sound from different family of instruments are worked majestically. Sometimes I had the sensation of listening the sound of a medieval organ. Despite that this concert is completely atonal there are some moments in which some kind of a tonal harmony is presented, which makes it in a all sense a very intelligent and clever structure. The third movement called "movimento preciso e mecanico", it seems to me to have listened something similar in the "rite of the spring" from Stravinsky .The fourth movement "presto" is a flowing sounds of the wood winds accompanied with the metal and strings in the same structure, at the end the piece disappears with a high register of the clarinet.
Ramifications for string orchestra : as the composer says: "it represents a further development of my method of composition with complex musical net-formations; it is, as it were, a terminus in the development from dense and static to broken up and mobile."The structure is like a magical tree in growing. One can hear the branches of this "surrealistic tree" growing more and more and going in different and opposite directions each of others and again from the branches grow more and more branches in opposite directions as well. To get these purpose the composer uses two forces of strings quartets, the first one with violin, viola, cello and a double bass and the second with violins, viola and cello, but the interesting thing is that the second group of strings is tuned a quarter tone higher that the first . One can think that the Ligeti in trying to invent the 24 notes chromatic scale, with all the structure that it implies, clefs, new tonalities, chromatic harmonies, etc, like Richard Wagner geniusly created in his "Tristan", but really not, he only wants to give the audience new aspect of the micro tonal harmony. Here and in many works of Ligeti the most important thing is produce new colors, new sensations, new states of mind that any particular brain can capture as it feels, so the concept of classical tonality and harmony are completely destroyed by the way, and a new concept of an unfocussed harmony starts to germinate, based basically in a musical entropy of hundreds and hundreds of notes, rhythms, colors, glissandos, clusters and so on.

Lux aeterna: Oh! what to say about this work? Is one of my favorites together with his eldest brother the Requiem. Composed for 16 voices ( 4S+4A+4T+4B) which are sang to "capella". The text is basically the Latin, and it is conceived in many different polyphonical voices treated in different blocks that allude the texts of "Lux aeterna", "Domini", "Cum Sanctis tuis in aeternum quia plus es", "Requien aeterna dona eis", "Domine", "Et lux perpetua luceat eis". This piece has the particularity that each voice sing its own melody in a a mode on "canon "variation at the beginning by the female voives until the tutti (bar 61).The exigencies of this piece in the vocal part are trully hard not only in the entonation, but more in the clusters (very near notes in the pitch as a half tones), so the singers need to be a great preparation even in his tessitura as the basses which have to sing in "falsette"(bar 37), in some parts of the score the singers have to sustain the breathing for a long time and the dynamics is also hard.
As before the classical, barroque, post romantic structure of the choral part is destroyed, but no so much and not at all if we return five hundred years before to the great English composer Thomas Tallis. He wrote a particular giant work called "motete to 40 parts" where he uses 40 independent voives ( 8 chorus of 5 voices each one) .The efect of listening this magestic motete is powerfull and spiritual and it seems to me to be listenning the "Ohm of the creation of the universe" while in a cathedral the believers continues praying , the effect is very similar when we listen Lux Aeterna that I am sure that Ligeti was inspired in this piece at least in its general structure.

Atmospheres: Other great work for orchestra, here the composer tries to create different musical environments to capture and impresess the senses of the listening by means of using different colors of the orchestra. For this porpuse Ligueti uses different kind of forces in different families of instrumentist, solos or mixed together, he uses excelently the tessitura of the instruments and squeeze them to the higher or lower registers that they support, the use of the contrastant dynamics (piannisimos and fortissimos, crecendos, diminiendos, tremolos, glissandos, etc) is also very important the provoke such as "spiritual atmospheres" and in the same way the use of clusters with a few instruments or with the "tutti Orquestal" are also spectacular.The spirit of piece is the use different contastant efects that is the central part of the work.

For those people who wants to discover and penetrate into the contemporary music of the 70th this recording must be in their collection.Totaly recomendable.

The Chamber Concerto is among my favorite Ligeti compositions. It's filled with activity, none of it really going anywhere specific, yet it evolves and develops in an organic, interest sustaining manner. Ligeti contrasts active and static textures as he does in much of his work from this period, creating his own distinct multi-movement form. The third movement explores mechanical polyrhythms and explodes at one point into what sounds like a broken monkey machine. The second floats freely in space. The first and last movements bookend the piece as they burble and pulse with dizzying interconnecting lines that seem to neither begin nor end.

Such is my enthusiasm for the Chamber Concerto that I have come to regard the other pieces on this disc as a bonus. The 2nd String Quartet is often recorded and highly regarded. "Ramifications" is an interesting study of string color and microtones, though I don't find it as absorbing as similar (though much more violent) works by Penderecki. The last track, Lux Aeterna, is the most beautifully creepy piece of choral music I've heard, though the "Ligeti Edition" recording stands as the best for being the most faithful to Ligeti's score ("All entrances soft as possible"). "Aventures" has taken some getting use to for me. I don't think I'm quite there yet. A chamber opera of nonsense verse seems like something I should be immediately drawn to, not being a big fan of the overstatement in lyrics of regular opera. While the idea fascinates, the performances always manage to lose me. I suspect it's something best heard live.

The other review on this page by me is for an out of print edition conducted by Pierre Boulez. The item being sold on this page does not contain any of the non Chamber Concerto recordings and I do not own it. For whatever reason, ... transferred this review from there to here, possibly because nobody else had reviewed it at the time. ... should feel free to eliminate that and this review. (You gave me no outlet to contact you via other means.)

My opinion of the Chamber Concerto still stands (hence the 4 stars, I didn't want to throw off the average), though I would recommend the recent Ligeti supervised Teldec recording.