This is, apparently,
the very last volume in what started
as the Sony Ligeti Edition and ended
up as the Teldec Ligeti Project. The
overall aim was to build up a ‘definitive’
recorded archive of the composer’s complete
output, and virtually every disc has
been universally praised, not least
by me. Standards of performance have
been astonishingly high, sound quality
first rate, liner notes (by the composer)
concise but uniquely insightful and
programming of the music stimulating.
As the last disc, this
does at first seem to have the feeling
of a ‘mopping up’ exercise, with quite
a bit of juvenilia and some tiny ‘ditties’.
But once again, taken as a whole, the
music on offer here is never less than
interesting, and at best absorbing and
entertaining. The meatiest items here
are undoubtedly Aventures, Nouvelles
Aventures, Ligeti’s astoundingly
original experiments in what the human
voice is capable of. Scored for three
singers and seven instruments, it comes
from possibly his most radical period
in the early 1960s, and is easily on
a par (certainly in terms of shock tactics)
with Maxwell Davies’s Eight Songs
for a Mad King or Berio’s Sequenza
III.
This could be classed
as ‘music, but not as we know it’, and
the singers are called upon to emit
all manner of weird and wonderful sounds.
Ligeti admits to trying an emulation
of his electronic ideas with human voices,
so forget text and translations here.
Instead, it’s best to just give yourself
over to the aural experience, and possibly
have a giggle at the same time. In fact,
the reaction of mirth from my son and
his friends would, I’m sure, not have
upset the composer at all; rather he
would be glad to have provoked a reaction
at all, as 1960s radicalism so enjoyed
doing. The panting and gasping at the
start may worry anyone not in the room
that you are watching a porn movie,
and later, as the mood gets angrier,
you may feel someone is in serious pain.
But that seems to be the whole point
– to be provocative, controversial,
make you sit up and take notice, which
it certainly does. The live performance
(I would love to have been there) is
sensational, with some well known, seasoned
singers going well beyond the call of
duty.
The short tape piece
Artikulation comes next
and demonstrates the link Ligeti speaks
of between his vocal and electronic
experiments. Unlike Aventures,
it sounds slightly dated now as studio
work has advanced so much, but it is
an effective example of doodlings in
musique concrète.
After these experiences,
the rest of the disc will either strike
you as welcome relief or too ordinary
to bother with. Personally, I like to
hear this sort of juxtaposition, as
it shows how far a composer’s musical
language has developed. It is also clear
from the notes that Ligeti has a soft
spot for these earlier works. The Musica
Ricercata started out life as
eleven piano pieces which were later
transcribed for the bayan (a type of
Russian accordion) by the Paris accordion
virtuoso Max Bonnay. Though its piano
roots are clear in many places, it works
well for this instrument and gets an
excellent performance here.
The Big Turtle
Fanfare is a 37 second piece
for solo trumpet, a melodic remnant
from incidental music Ligeti wrote for
a Chinese puppet play. The Cello
Sonata is also quite short (around
8 minutes) but is packed full of invention
and expressive mood swings. It may well
be the discovery of the disc for some.
The final items fittingly
go back to the composer’s Bartókian
folk roots. The Old Hungarian
Ballroom Dances
were written while he was still a student
at the Budapest Musical Academy, and
were the result of a specific request
by radio producers for music to ‘cultivate
the national heritage’. This it certainly
does, most of the material coming from
the same ethno-musical sources as Bartók
and Kodály. The Ballad
and Dance explores similar territory,
this time for school orchestra, and
uses material that crops up later in
his nationalistic Romanian Concerto,
already featured on Volume 2.
This disc may not tell
you anything terribly new about Ligeti,
but once again high standards of production,
performance and presentation are in
evidence and make this a very fitting
end to an invaluable series.
Tony Haywood
Earlier volumes 1
2
3
4
Sarah Leonard (soprano), Linda Hirst (mezzo),
Omar Ebrahim (baritone) 