The Ligeti Project II: Lontano / Atmosphères / Apparitions / San Francisco Polyphony / Concert Românesc - Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Jonathan Nott

Gyorgy Ligeti (Artist), Jonathon Nott (Artist), Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 11, 2002)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Teldec
• ASIN: B00005Y34N
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #53,799 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Lontano, for orchestra

2. Atmosphères, for large orchestra

3. Apparitions, for orchestra: 1. Lento

4. Apparitions, for orchestra: 2. Agitato

5. San Francisco Polyphony, for orchestra

6. Concert Românesc, for orchestra: 1. Andantino

7. Concert Românesc, for orchestra: 2. Allegro vivace

8. Concert Românesc, for orchestra: 3. Adagio ma non troppo

9. Concert Românesc, for orchestra: 4. Molto vivace

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The five extraordinary works on this disc will captivate Ligeti fans and entrance even those who don't know his music. The focus in Lontano on refined tonal colors makes it one of the most elegant pieces in the modernist canon. Atmosphères is more static, holding interest through subtle changes in color and dynamics. Apparitions was Ligeti's first success in the West after his escape from Hungary during the 1956 Soviet invasion. It's a ghostly two-movement work. The first, Lento, is creepy in a dynamically subdued way. The second, Agitato, surprises in its violence, the orchestral crashes fulfilling the fears embodied in the Lento movement.

San Francisco Polyphony, from 1974, is the most recent Ligeti composition on the disc, and it packs more into its 12-plus minutes than many full-evening works. It teems with dense orchestral figures and dynamic contrasts. Under its colorful façade, the work demonstrates how uncompromising modern music can enchant both ear and mind. It should become a concert staple as we move deeper into the 21st century. Finally, an early 1951 work, Concert Românesc, harks back to Bartók's transformations of folk material. Rich in color and vitality, its four movements are full of the dissonances of village bands and melodies rooted in Romanian folk music and in Ligeti's fertile, sympathetic imagination. The playing of the Berlin Philharmonic under conductor Jonathan Nott is outstanding, as is the engineering. --Dan Davis

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best CDs of contemporary music., June 7, 2006

By 

Paco Yáñez (Santiago de Compostela) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ligeti Project II: Lontano / Atmosphères / Apparitions / San Francisco Polyphony / Concert Românesc - Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Jonathan Nott (Audio CD)

There're not many CDs like this available on the stores. It's the clear example of perfect CD in its repertoire. A wonderful composer, perfect performances and excellent recordings, together with a very good booklet and presentation.

Some of the works are among the best of Ligeti, in my opinion. The Concert Romanesc (1951), is in clear debt with Bartók language. We have to remember Ligeti is from Transylvania, from a region where Eötvös, Kurtág and the own Bartók were from. The folk music is very important there, as the Bartók transcriptions show, and Ligeti was concerned about it in his early years, like we listen too in other works, specially the Musica Ricarcata in the multiple transcriptions that music allows. Concert Romanesc is really a good piece in its style, that of popular music based on Romanian tunes, that really were Hungarian in pre-war times, before that zone where transferred to Romania. Some of the concerto themes are present too in early pieces for violins and strings, those we can listen on the Sony Edition Nº1, played by the Arditti Quartet. These kind of pieces, like String Quartet Nº1, are the first Ligeti period; next step will come with some of the pieces you can hear in the rest of the CD.

Apparitions (1958-59), was an scandal in its premiere, and it marks a turning point on Ligeti's aesthetics and way of composing. From a quite weberian style, the piece is brief and extremely concise in the way the instruments play. No more tunes, no more melodies, no more folk motives in this music; just really apparitions of sound in different ways and combinations, from different places in the orchestra. A very calm first movement, full of contrasts between silence and sound irruptions, and a second one much more vivid and fast. Teldec affirms this is the world premiere recording, in fact I don't know any other one, so I have to trust them. It's incredible this decisive piece was not recorded, as a turning point on Ligeti's work and as some of the most extreme and fantastic pieces form the `50s, a really breathtaking composition you will enjoy much more with the successive auditions.

Atmospheres (1961), one of the most important pieces in the orchestral repertoire in the XXth Century, has an enormous performance on this CD, a jewel never heard before in this way on CD. Ligeti has written about Atmospheres that is a piece unique, in the sense its composed in a way that its mathematical combinations reach only to this work. Wonderful use of micro-polyphony and micro-tonality, composed through nets of sound really complex in which every instruments play different parts that construct an outstanding group. Strings, woodwinds, metals play on them limits, going from the highest tones to the deepest, like in the change from woodwinds to the massive entrance of deep strings. Lot of people know this piece from Kubrick's 2001; you should try this one, that is really much more better performance.

Lontano (1968) is very careful about colours and polyphony, in fact we can here a quite medieval canon in the final sections of this piece, because of great interest of Ligeti on that medieval polyphony. The piece really seems to create new states of conscience, as the lines of music seems to go to no-known dimensions. Wonderful work too, taken by Kubrick again for his amazing film The Shinning, in which it's used perfectly, like all the music used in that film (Penderecki, Bartók, etc).

I don't like San Francisco Polyphony (1973-74) so much like the two previous pieces, even the style is very close, but I really prefer some other works from that time. In the late `70s and in the `80s Ligeti will go into a new step I have to confess I don't like so much like the one which has Atmospheres, Lontano, String Quartet Nº2, Requiem, Doppelkonzert, Cello Concert...

The performances are outstanding and simply perfect; they bring new life on these scores and the playing of, probably, the best orchestra in the world, conducted by one of the best young conductors in the world, Jonathan Nott, very trained on contemporary music.

The recording is very, very good, with some pieces live-recorded, like Atmospheres and Lontano and some of them studio recordings, like Apparitions. It's incredible how the Berliners play so perfectly in a live-recording.

Interesting texts by Ligeti on this jewel; one of the best CDs of contemporary music that I know.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Watershed Works, July 18, 2002

By 

Christopher Forbes "weirdears" (Brooklyn,, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Ligeti Project II: Lontano / Atmosphères / Apparitions / San Francisco Polyphony / Concert Românesc - Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Jonathan Nott (Audio CD)

Thanks to Teldec for continuing Sony's excellent series of the music of Ligeti. It is nice to see this kind of retrospective for one of the world's most important composers before he dies.

These works are watershed pieces of the European avant-garde. Atmospheres is familiar from the soundtrack to Kubrick's 2001, but the work is wonderful on it's own. Ligeti's early mature orchestral style consists of masses of cloudy harmonies created by using "micropolyphony," dense clusters of subtley shifting chromatic motives that morph into ever changing clouds of color. Atmospheres, Lontano and Apparitions are great examples of this style. They are all relatively static pieces. Lontano is more consonant than the others, but this has little meaning in music that is more about color and texture than traditional melody or harmony.

San Francisco Polyphony is a work from the 70's and gives an example of Ligeti's later style. Though still involved in micropolyphony, the textures are more transparent, there is a stronger sense of melodic motive, and Ligeti explores the subtle use of microtonal intervals.

Especially interesting on the CD is the inclusion of one of Ligeti's early Romanian works. These show the influence of Bartok and folk music on the young composer, but the voice is still his own.

Highly recommended to lovers of the 60s avant-garde.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ligeti's works for orchestra, magnificently recorded, June 14, 2002

By 

R. Hutchinson "autonomeus" (a world ruled by fossil fuels and fossil minds) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Ligeti Project II: Lontano / Atmosphères / Apparitions / San Francisco Polyphony / Concert Românesc - Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Jonathan Nott (Audio CD)

Here, in the second volume of Teldec's Ligeti Project, are 5 great orchestral works, newly recorded by the Berlin Philharmonic, with Jonathan Nott conducting (Nott, who led Boulez's Ensemble Intercontemporain for several years), superb versions that surpass the older Wergo recordings:

Apparitions (1958-9 -- 8'35)

Atmospheres (1961 -- 8'51)

Lontano (1967 -- 11'35)

San Francisco Polyphony (1973-4 -- 12'56)

and the delightful Bartokian "Concert romanesc" (1951 -- 12'10).

Both "Atmospheres" and "Lontano" are well-known from Stanley Kubrick soundtracks (2001 and The Shining, respectively), and have been available on the Wergo label, as has "SF Polyphony." Unbelievably, this is the premier recording of "Apparitions," which was the piece that led to Ligeti's first fame and notoriety when it was performed in Cologne in 1960. As on the LIGETI EDITION, VOLUME 1 recording of string quartets (see my review), the early folk-influenced, "Concert romanesc" goes last, closing the album on a light note with another premier recording. While I seriously doubt that it will take conventional concert halls by storm, "San Francisco Polyphony" is the most outgoing, exuberant, fast-moving and fascinating work here -- it presages his "late period," which includes such superb works as the Violin and Piano Concertos.

This disc, with liner notes by Ligeti and gorgeous Teldec packaging, certainly accomplishes the goal of the Edition/Project, to present definitive versions of the music of Gyorgy Ligeti, one of the 20th century's finest composers!

See my GYORGY LIGETI'S SOUNDWORLD list, as well as my 7 BEST COMPOSERS OF THE LATE 20TH CENTURY list, for more Ligeti recordings and reviews.