harmonia mundi to Release New Ligeti Album

György Ligeti is one of those composers that intrigued me upon “first contact,” which, in my case, was “Atmosphères.” Leonard Bernstein recorded his performance with the New York Philharmonic shortly after having given the New York premier with the New York Philharmonic early in 1964. My interest was reinforced when the music surfaced in the soundtrack for 2001: A Space Odyssey; and, for all I know, Kubrick used the Bernstein recording after having rejected the original score that Alex North had composed for him. Fortunately, my awareness of Ligeti was reinforced by conductors that understood him better, such as Pierre Boulez and the pianist Yuja Wang, who included three of his études in her Berlin Recital album. 

György Ligeti on the cover of the album being discussed

The end of this month will see the release of a new harmonia mundi album devoted almost entirely to Ligeti. It will begin with his five-movement violin concerto (first conducted in its final version by Boulez) and conclude with his piano concerto, also in five movements. In the center of the program, so to speak, there is a performance of one of his earliest works, the “Concert românesc,” completed in 1951. Scored for a small orchestra, this amounts to an engaging account of “Ligeti before he became Ligeti!” Interleaved among the three Ligeti selections are two of the five Aus der Ferne compositions by György Kurtág, scored for string quartet.

The primary soloist on this album is violinist Isabel Faust, since she performs the Aus der Ferne movements as well as the violin concerto. The other quartet members are violinist Martial Gauthier, Carole Roth on viola, and cellist Robin Michael. The soloist for the piano concerto is Jean-Frédéric Neuburger. The orchestra is Les Siècles, conducted by François-Xavier Roth. As most readers will probably expect, Amazon.com has already created a Web page for processing pre-orders for this album.

One of the things I like about Ligeti is that he is just as capable of being prankish as he is of being cerebral. This is most evident in the violin concerto, in which one of the solo violin passages is accompanied by four ocarinas. (The more time I spend listening to Ligeti, the more I recognize that there is never a dull moment!)

I was somewhat amused to be writing this while Faust is currently visiting San Francisco to perform with the San Francisco Symphony. For that occasion she prepared Alban Berg’s violin concerto. Most likely, both Ligeti and Kurtág were influenced by Berg; so I took some pleasure in having the opportunity to write a post-Berg article! Nevertheless, both of the composers on this new harmonia mundi album have distinguished themselves with “voices” decidedly different from Berg’s. I continue to look forward to new “contacts of discovery” in Ligeti’s catalog, and I enjoyed the decision of the producers to draw upon Kurtág to provide “spacing” between the Ligeti selections.

Once you get used to the dissonance, you will find that this album serves up an engaging journey of discovery.