Ligeti: String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2

Parker Quartet (Artist), Gyorgy Ligeti (Composer), -- (Conductor) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Conductor: --
• Composer: Gyorgy Ligeti
• Audio CD (December 15, 2009)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Naxos
• ASIN: B002TMLRQ8
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #152,427 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Review

2011 GRAMMY winner: Best Chamber Music Performance --National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, February 2011

Product Description

Gyorgy Ligeti's choral and orchestral music hit the mainstream when it was featured in the soundtrack of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but his equally remarkable chamber works remain less well known. While indebted to his compatriot Bartók for its folk-inflected passages, Ligeti's First Quartet, subtitled Métamorphoses nocturnes, is nonetheless a work of striking originality. The Second Quartet, composed around fifteen years later, abounds in contrasts between glacial
stillness and manic activity, mechanistic pizzicatos and gentle oscillations. His early Andante and Allegro is richly expressive and easily accessible.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sensational Performances, January 17, 2010

By 

J Scott Morrison (Middlebury VT, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ligeti: String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 (Audio CD)

The big news here is the performances of the Parker Quartet, a group of young musicians who came out of the New England Conservatory. The members are Daniel Chong and Karen Kim, violins, Jessica Bodner, viola and Kee-Hyun Kim, cello. In this recording of the Ligeti string quartets they are up against some of the most admired quartets around -- e.g., the Arditti and the Hagen Quartets -- and they give no quarter. I actually prefer their playing to either of those marvelous groups. Part of that may be due to the exceptionally clean and lifelike sound given them by engineer Norbert Kraft and co-producer Bonnie Silver, but the lion's share of the credit goes to the musicians themselves. This is extraordinarily difficult music to play (as well as put across) and the Parkers are virtually without fault. I would travel miles to hear them play live.

As to the music itself, there are three pieces here: the First Quartet (1953-54), the Second Quartet (1968) and the Andante and Allegretto (1950). The last of these is a two movement set that Ligeti wrote within the stringent guidelines in Hungary at the time: easily accessible music that is generally tonal, uses folk elements and is sugary without being cloying.

The First Quartet is subtitled 'Métamorphoses nocturnes' and is indebted to the string quartets of Bartók, particularly his Quartets No. 3 & 4. It is in one continuous movement that nonetheless comprises the usual four movements of a quartet: a sonata-allegro, a manic presto, a slow movement containing a boozy waltz, and a final energetic movement that collapses into a resigned conclusion.

The Second Quartet is by far the best-known of Ligeti's quartets and is notable for the composer's penchant for dramatic gestures from moments of breath-stopping stillness, to manic episodes, to unison harmonics, varieties of pizzicati and jazzy rhythms cheek by jowl with sections of brutal dissonance. There is not one dull moment in this five-movement, twenty-minute work. The Parkers play it for it all it's worth. I could not stop listening to it. And each time through I found new things to marvel at. This after knowing this quartet for years from the earlier recordings.

A definite winner.

Scott Morrison

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ligeti by the young Koreans+ an American, February 26, 2010

By 

William J. Duffy - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Ligeti: String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 (Audio CD)

I know this quartet,they practiced for the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in our music room.They were very young Shouse Fellows.I listened with amazement to music sounding like that played by an eminent senior quartet. Since, they have received excellent reviews from respected critics. I enjoyed their interpretation of the Ligeti quartets ,they are quite difficult but were very well played.In a few weeks they will perform at the Detroit Chamber Music Society which gets many of the worlds best quartets. I look forward to more CDs from the Parkers

5.0 out of 5 stars Musical Metamorphosis, March 1, 2011

By 

Dean R. Brierly (Studio City, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ligeti: String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 (Audio CD)

Ligeti only wrote two string quartets in his lifetime (regrettably), but both are superb examples of the form, in which the composer's unique synthesis of atonal and lyrical elements are on full and glorious display. The First String Quartet was written in 1953-54, when Ligeti's musical language was still evolving, and is unsurprisingly more traditional in form. Yet even at this early stage, his work betrayed his experimental nature. The melodic line, while highly accessible, proceeds in nervous, jagged fashion, engaging the listener emotionally while keeping him or her off balance intellectually. This characteristic duality would become more pronounced as Ligeti's art matured. The four movements alternate between moments of almost frenzied atonality with passages of heartbreaking lyricism and stillness. Also noteworthy is how Ligeti concentrates on the sound of each instrument, making the distinct tonal textures of violin, viola and cello integral elements of the musical narrative. The Second String Quartet is a much different and far more formidable animal, foregrounding the radical abstraction of its harmonic and rhythmic contours. A pronounced sense of restlessness and foreboding pervades the first four movements, with the threat (or promise) of a violent explosion at any moment. The writing has a muscular, at times brutal power. Yet for all its fierce experimentation, it's no less accessible than Ligeti's earlier, more conventional quartet, and the beatific serenity of the last movement is one of the most moving, if enigmatic, five minutes of music you're likely to come across.