Forbes Classical CD Of The Week: Ligeti's Modernism With A Heart

Happy Boxing Day to You!

…Frieder Bernius, leader of the Stuttgart Chamber Choir, was taught by a member of the Schola Cantorum Stuttgart whose founder and director in turn was the great Clytus Gottwald. Gottwald not only created some of the most challenging, brilliant, and touching arrangements for acapella groups, he was also close to György Ligeti and commissioned the latter’s Lux æterna (1966) for the 16 voices of his – the former’s – ensemble. That text specifically offered itself, because Ligeti had not set it in his Requiem (1965) and in that sense Lux æterna is a natural companion piece to the Requiem. This release on the chorally-inclined Carus label (mainly a publisher of scores with a side in superb recordings to popularize those scores – a setup not unlike Wergo/Schott) follows and links all these tracks and combines Frider Bernius’ 2006 performance of the Requiem with that of Lux æterna (put down in 1996) and then adds four of those sublime Gottwald arrangements of Ravel, Debussy, and Mahler (recorded between 1996 and 2007)[1]…

-> Classical CD Of The Week: Ligeti's Modernism With A Heart

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Forbes Classical CD of the Week: Joseph Haydn & György Ligeti, Piano Concertos

…The idea of combining the music of Joseph Haydn with that of György Ligeti is an inspired one. There is a reason why Haydn works very well with contemporary composers (so long as they have a playfulness, joy, and a wry smile in their writing): his is music that schools the ears in listening carefully, it readies us for acute perception, and it is timeless because it is so exceptionally well crafted and so sublimely constructed. …

-> Classical CD Of The Week: A Timeless Combination Of Ligeti And Haydn

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Antoine Tamestit Returns

Bach, Cello Suites 1/3/5 (arr. viola), A. Tamestit (Naïve, 2013) Bach, Partita No. 2 (arr. viola) / Ligeti, Sonata for Solo Viola, A. Tamestit (Naïve, 2007)

Charles T. Downey, Tamestit ably straddles the cello-music-on-viola gap at Kennedy Center (Washington Post, April 26)

The viola and the cello have the same tuning, an octave apart, but the transfer of one instrument’s music to the other is not without challenges. French violist Antoine Tamestit played both borrowed music and a modern masterwork in a Sunday evening recital presented by Washington Performing Arts. The event marked his return to the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater more than a decade after his debut there.

Tamestit played two of the three solo cello suites of Bach he has recorded on the viola for the Naïve label. At times one misses the gravitas of the lower instrument, on the low notes of the C and G preludes, for example, or the folksy drone section of the C suite’s Gigue... [Continue reading]

Antoine Tamestit, viola (on 1672 "Mahler" Stradivarius viola)
Music by Bach, Ligeti
Washington Performing Arts
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

SEE ALSO:
jfl, Ionarts at Large: Widmann's New Viola Concerto (Ionarts, March 15, 2016)

---, Ionarts at Large: BRSO Season Opening Concerts (Ionarts, October 7, 2012)

Tim Page, From Antoine Tamestit, Arresting Viola Voicings (Washington Post, November 25, 2003)

From the 2012 ARD Competition, Day 5

Day 5, String Quartets, Round 2

The first impression the Anima Quartet makes is that they sound very different from the expected. There’s a sense of timidity, for lack of a better word, behind a screen of expressive business. Theirs is a light tone, silvery and flitting, that first seems like interpretative inefficiency, but soon works its own enchanting ways. Especially in the second movement of the Mendelssohn Quartet op.44/2 which turns out particularly suited to that sound. What may have started out as strangeness was eventually channeled, via a decreasingly nervous slow movement, into a happily frenzied finale. Almost unnoticed, they also managed to keep a titillating alertness throughout the entire work, without a movement or even just a part of it slacking off. That might be more of an achievement in Brahms, true, but even so it’s a quality that can scarcely be overestimated.

Their style—if one can speak of “style” after hearing them only once—would seem top bode well for Ligeti’s First Quartet, which demands brawn and dark stained sound much less than it does charged nervousness and a penchant for the weird and pale. The Anima Quartet had the latter, but they also brought a burnished tenacity to the first half of the Métamorphoses nocturnes, and an air of surprising confidence—as if Ligeti had been in their repertoire for years, rather than being a newly learned acquisition for this competition. If the quartet was ultimately still note-bound, at least it was very well told off the page.

The Anima Quartet’s generally faster tempi—somewhere between trying to prove something and always keeping the music on the run—might have had something to do with their ability to keep the ears firmly tied to the music. The effect of their playing is hard to describe: Nothing impresses in any immediate sense… if anything one might think of a thing or two to criticize. And a little later one looks back, wondering how the music just played could have been so particularly entertaining. I can easily imagine an audience enjoying an evening of chamber music by these performers and leave, delighted, attributing the good time had on the music and general circumstances, not the interpreters. In that sense, theirs is an involuntarily self-effacing way. If I ran a chamber music series, I’d hire them any day… whether I’d advance them to the semi final of the ARD competition is another matter. (And indeed, they did not make the cut for the semi finals.)

The Armida Quartett was back, and confirmed in Richard Schumann’s Quartet in A, op.41/3 their civilized sound, on the light and elegant side which is their one facet of which the offer variations, but no real deviation. As it was, the Schumann—easily tanked by thick, romantic performances (true for virtually all Schumann repertoire)—took very well to the Armida Quartett’s way with him. The way the dug into the second movement with chugging momentum was terrific, and where I had quibbled with the first violinist’s performance before, there were scarcely any quibbles left. The Allegro molto vivace Finale, was propulsive, not profound.

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From the 2012 ARD Competition, Day 4

Day 4, String Quartets, Round 2

All the ten participating string quartets were given a chance to present themselves again in the second round—a nod not only to the limited number of those who had shown up, but also to the relative proximity of the shown accomplishments. (Which was certainly true for the second day of the first round.)

The South Korean Novus String Quartet, like four other participants, had opted for Ligeti’s 1954 Quartet No.1 in the second round. It’s a work that has just about become mainstream fare among ‘contemporary’ quartets, and rightly so. Little wonder that Luciano Berio’s Notturno, Pierre Boulez’ Livre pour quatuor, Franco Donatoni’s La souris sans Sourire, Hans Werner Henze’s Quartet No.5, György Kurtág’s Officium breve, Conlon Nancarrow’s Quartet No.1, Helmut Lachenmann’s Quartet No.3, and Wolfgang Rihm’s Quartet No.9 got no takers. Only Henri Dutilleux’s Ainsi la nuit, the other contemporary classic, was as popular with four picks, while the Acies Quarett and the French Quatuor Zaïde bucked the trend with Wolfgang Rihm’s Quartet No.4 and Iannis Xenakis’ Tetras, respectively.

They hopped into the grateful Ligeti’s Métamorphoses nocturnes with gusto and a sinewy, full bodied sound, shy on atmosphere at first, and with unimaginative pizzicatos (which, granted, is the international standard for string players at all levels), but great piano-pianissimos. Some atmosphere arrived yet, but not the grasshoppers, cicadas, and ‘David Lynch’ that I usually associate with the work, but more beeping cartoon Martians and “Red Dwarf”.

Their lean and pointed, rhythmically compelling Dvořák was rather straight-laced and got under way, tightly squeezed, with awfully little lilt. Their very harmonious-homogenous second movement displayed the viola from its finest sounding side, the third movement started très explosif, but as with much of the other movements, the beginning seemed to promise more than the follow-through delivered. That became noticeable when the last movement, slow to the point of phlegmatic, became a little long in the tooth...

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Jeremy Denk and Competitions

Ligeti, Études pour piano / Beethoven, Sonata (op. 111), J. Denk (released on May 15, 2012) Nonesuch 530562 | 67'

When one thinks of pianists who might be invited to play at a piano competition, the name of Jeremy Denk does not leap to mind. Not that he is not a fine musician, with an eclectic sense of programming and a daring interpretative approach, but perhaps because of those things. Denk has not risen to prominence by winning a major competition. In fact, he does not think much of competitions, as he wrote in a tongue-in-cheek response to a review of another pianist in the New York Times in 2008. Comparing the virtues of Apollo and Dionysus, as a way to deconstruct the opposition of "Apollonian" and "Dionysian" as ways to describe a musician's style, he wrote about Apollo's competition with Marsyas, which Apollo rigged, then won, and then took revenge by flaying Marsyas alive and displaying his inside-out skin on a tree:

Apollo was among the first to propose a music competition. That alone would be the darkest imaginable mark on his record, an utterly unforgivable sin. But then, after he wins by subterfuge—like a jerk—he is not particularly gracious in victory. Whereas: Dionysus never even gets involved in a music contest to begin with… In my opinion, Dionysus 2, Apollo 0.

Yet there was Jeremy Denk on Wednesday night at the Clarice Smith Center, invited to play a high-profile recital as part of the William Kapell International Piano Competition and Festival. I quote this humorous passage not because I think that Denk agreed to play this recital as a way to thumb his nose at the idea of competitions, but because the example of Denk's unusual career is a reminder to all of us, including the competitors, that competitions do not always bring out the best in us.

Denk chose to play something from his new CD, on the Nonesuch label (you can listen here), that also raised an eyebrow, most of the first two books of György Ligeti's Études pour piano, concluding, as he did on the recording, with no. 13, "L'escalier du diable." The etude, of course, is the symbol of the process of technical perfection that is the goal of competition pianists, something that Ligeti pokes fun at, as Denk observes in his entertaining liner notes, with all sorts of tricks, like keys being held down so that a chromatic scale exercise is forced to stumble and stutter and a passage in octaves with wrong notes built in, both heard in the third etude ("Touches bloquées"). Ligeti, who died in 2006, is one of the giants of the later 20th century, a composer who transcended the rigid boundaries of modernist orthodoxies, and the etudes are among his greatest achievements. What most impresses me about Ligeti's approach to the piano in these pieces is that he draws from the instrument a prismatic range of sounds and ideas without resorting to any Cagean tricks. There are no bells and whistles in the Ligeti etudes -- no objects disrupting the strings, no monkey business under the lid, no thumping on the body -- all sound is made through the keys, which is how the instrument was meant to function.

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, Jeremy Denk mixes Brahms and Ligeti at Clarice Smith Center (Washington Post, July 20)

Denk attacked this music with ferocity, taking at face value the composer's many directions to strip away the veneer of technical precision. Misplaced accents in no. 1 ("Désordre") eventually separate the two hands, notated in conflicting key signatures -- so that the right hand, which Ligeti instructs should always be louder, plays only white keys, while the left plays only black keys -- and misalign the bar lines. The often puckish dynamic markings split hairs down to the absurd pppppppp, and Ligeti often instructs that time signatures are "only a guideline," as in no. 7, and Denk often gave the impression of musical structure, in spite of or perhaps because of an attempt at rigorous control, coming apart at the seams. The most memorable parts played to Denk's strength of vicious attack, while the more coloristic etudes fell a little flat for want of greater craftsmanship of sound (see Pierre-Laurent Aimard, whose obsession with details of sound was documented in the film Pianomania). Still, few pianists are crazy enough to play so many of these works at once in a live concert, and Denk's rendition was thrilling to hear.

The same virtues and weaknesses were heard in the Brahms second half, with playing that emphasized rumble over finesse. The gorgeous second piece in the op. 118 set had some lovely hesitations and unusual moments savored, and the final piece was quite enigmatic. The first book of the Paganini Variations was much more in Denk's wheelhouse, again favoring wildness of attack and tempo over beautiful finish. Enthusiastic ovations elicited two encores, both reprises of pieces played earlier in the recital: Ligeti's fourth etude ("Fanfares"), this time played from memory, and an even more sentimental version of Brahms op. 118/2.

Cuarteto Casals: Supernova in Ligeti

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

Metamorphosis (Bartók, Ligeti, Kurtág), Cuarteto Casals (released on August 10, 2010) HMC 902062 | 54'13"

Both in concert and on disc, Spain's Cuarteto Casals is one of the groups we follow around here, and we expected good things from their return to Washington on Saturday night, at the Kreeger Museum. The group's best performances have the verve and power that one hears from many string quartets, but also much more than that, an amber warmth that predominates over acidic buzz, and a collaborative esprit -- rather than a competitive one -- that allows greater dynamic and rhythmic freedom without losing cohesion. These four young musicians, two of whom are brothers, also have a knack for choosing unusual repertory -- from Toldrà and Turina, to Juan Arriaga, to Ligeti and Kurtág, in their latest recording -- and for playing the core repertory with polish and unexpected interpretative choices.

Boccherini, op. 32/3-6, Quartetto Borciani Boccherini, op. 32/1-2 and 29, Quartetto Borciani

This concert, in the lively acoustic of the Kreeger's Great Hall, opened with one of the several dozen string quartets by Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805), op. 32, no. 5. As much as we love to hear the Mozart and especially Haydn quartets on chamber music programs, Boccherini would be a welcome alternative for the early classical slot far more often than we currently hear him -- look at all that chamber music! As it turned out, it was our good luck to be reminded of this on a particularly appropriate day: the concert took place on the composer's birthday, February 19. (Because he spent the last phase of his career in Spain, it was another reason for the Ambassador of Spain, who lives just across Foxhall Rd. from the Kreeger, to co-sponsor this concert.) Boccherini was a gifted melodist, creating tunes like the first theme of the first movement of this quartet, almost too simple but yielding many good ideas in a streamlined way. It is not fancy or overly intellectual music, but it sounds very good, and this performance gave every indication that the group's new Boccherini CD, recorded last fall, will be worth hearing. The forms of each movement were marked incisively, with a beautiful handling of the cadenza at the end of the fourth movement, marked by Boccherini as "Capriccio ad libitum," by violinist Abel Tomàs, who sat first violin for this piece only.

The group's performance of György Ligeti's first string quartet, subtitled Métamorphoses nocturnes, was nothing short of revelatory. Many young string quartets are playing Ligeti's quartets these days -- the Pacifica, Parker, Brentano, Galatea, Artemis, Hagen, for a start -- but few have brought out all of the first quartet's best qualities like this performance (they also played the work during their Carnegie Hall debut in 2007). This quartet dates from the early 1950s, just in the period after Ligeti had survived World War II: working in Budapest, he and his friend György Kurtág devoted themselves to the music of Bartók, with Ligeti even making ethnomusicological outings into the countryside to collect Hungarian folk songs. Bartók's influence can be heard throughout the work, in the irregular, folk-influenced rhythms and the development of the chromatic motif that opens it, as well as the many hallucinatory instrumental effects. First violinist Vera Martínez led the group with a tone that could be both ferocious and seductive, that last an important part of the nocturnal inspiration that is sometimes missed. The group's new recording shows their understanding of the historical background, pairing the piece with Bartók's fourth quartet and Kurtág's twelve microludes for string quartet, op. 13.

All of the group's suavity seemed to evaporate in the second half, when pianist Andreas Klein joined them for Schumann's piano quintet, op. 44. This performance was a reminder that even the most exquisite piece of chamber music -- something that we have heard memorably on its own and as the accompaniment to modern dance -- can be rendered mediocre by the wrong performance. Where Joyce Yang, playing the work with the Takács Quartet, was equal parts transparency and force where she needed it, Klein's hand at the open-lidded piano, an already loud instrument in that space, was all brute force. He did not seem to give any quarter to the other musicians, pushing and pulling the tempo to suit his own needs, and the strings responded in kind, generally with hammering force. This led to some disjunction rhythmically between piano and strings in the faster movements, and an unsatisfying, overblown ensemble sound, a disappointing end to the evening.

The next concerts at the Kreeger Museum will be the annual June Chamber Music Festival (June 10 to 17).

Ionarts-at-Large: Ligeti Supplants Beethoven - BRSO & Sakari Oramo

The Ligeti experience: G.Ligeti, Concert Românesc et al., Nott / Berlin Phil Teldec

It is sad that Haydn, who I always like to see (if not always hear) on a Symphony Orchestra’s program, was the victim of the conductor-change—Sakari Oramo for the ill-disposed Mariss Jansons. But then it was well made up for in the BRSO’s second concert of the season by including instead György Ligeti’s “Concert Românesc” for Orchestra. It’s very, very early Ligeti, and especially the first movement sounds like straight forward folksy, a Bartók-influenced romantic concerto fully within the harmonic boundaries of music from the 19^th century. In the second movement we get a first brief, eerie buzz from the solo violist that one could (want to) see as foreshadowing his later work. As the brief, energetic work moves on, we get more and more of haze and ambiguity, birds twittering among long-distance horn calls that create the atmosphere of a lost symphonic movement by Mahler. The work is terrific, just as its execution under Oramo was, and the orchestra presented itself in a particularly colorful mood.

Most exciting 9th on record: DSCH, Symphony No.9, Kosler / CzPO (+ 'fake' Mravinsky 5th) Chant du Monde

Next up Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony. Perhaps, perhaps DSCH wanted to one-up Stalin & Co with his Ninth, as claimed in and oft-quoted from Shostakovich’s utterly fraudulent ‘memoirs’ (courtesy Solomon Volkov). Naturally the political class expected something in the grand, overwhelming and pathos-laden tradition of Beethoven or Schubert, Bruckner, Mahler. The Ninth as a ‘great’ symphony, as a monumental statement… in this case also a claim to victory in World War II. But they would have expected that, even if DSCH didn’t mean to make a political statement. More likely, in any case, it was DSCH’s personal, non-political way of dealing with the looming forbearers of ‘Ninths’ that made him compose a quintessential anti-Beethovenish Ninth. Bruckner quipped about his Sixth Symphony to be the “sauciest”… well, that’s certainly true for Shostakovich’s Ninth. A short little firecracker of a classical symphony, it’s no more than thirty highly entertaining and amusing minutes long, more fit to consecrate a Ferris wheel than to celebrate the triumph of Soviet-heroism over Nazi-evil.

The symphony starts like a slapstick film with Charlie Chaplin and morphs, over five movements, to something more melancholic; more towards Buster Keaton. (Indeed, one Soviet critic complained much later about being presented in the Ninth with a “frivolous Yankee instead of the picture of a victorious Soviet comrade.”) The idea of Mariss Jansons, well possibly the foremost Shostakovich-conductor of our time, performing the Ninth here and then was very tempting. (On his recording cycle, the early 9^th with the Oslo Philharmonic is not a good example of Jansons at his Shostakovich-best.) It was a fine achievement of Saramo’s to not make us miss Jansons in the first and third movements, where all the kicking liveliness and lurking dystopia was present, and splendid solo contributions from the BRSO players to boot. But the second, fourth, and fifth movements were sagging, lulled where they should have pulled, and missed that last kick that should never leave the piece, even in its slower, grayer moments.

The Perahia that couldda been: LvB, Piano Concertos 3 & 4, Perahia / Haitink / RCO CBS

Beethoven’s Fourth Concerto—part of the complete concerto cycle of the BRSO this year—was to have been played by Murray Perahia (followed by Paul Lewis, András Schiff, Maria João Pires, and Mitsuko Uchida in that cycle). He, too, had to bail out and a certain Francesco Piemontesi stepped in. He received a very generous reception from the audience after all was played and done, but the opening notes, unaffected by confidence, led to little more than dexterous anonymity, dotted with occasional, superb little touches and an equal amount of smudges. The slow movement was at once the most interesting in its interpretively oh-so-romantic way, but the tone Piemontesi elicited from the Hamburg Steinway was clattery, clanky, and bright. It didn’t in any true sense replace what one would hope Perahia to have deliverd.

Ionarts at Large: Notes from the ARD International Music Competition (Day 9)

Day nine of the ARD International Music Competition saw the conclusion of the second round of string quartets in two blocks of concerts, featuring five groups, and eight different works. The Brodowski Quartet (UK/Germany) made the start with Felix Mendelssohn’s Quartet in f-minor op.80. A tad hectic in the opining and surprisingly fast in the first movement, it was right on the edge between rushed and invigorating; possibly odd, maybe exciting. Good ideas about performance details were noticeable, as were small infelicities. Innovative accents and again a speed-demon approach cast the second movement in a new light, too. Instinctively the discrepancy to one’s own expectations might have this a bad thing, but the experience of a new sound is actually quite bracing. Nicely understated the slow movement, the fourth movement was: fast--always, skilled--very much, but occasionally imprecise. Very interesting and very entertaining in its own way, but maybe not the stuff that will get you advanced in a competition.

I would have advanced them anyway, just because their choice of Schnittke’s Quartet No.3 was so inspired and their performance impassioned. The opening of that work is as effective as any, drawing the inclined listener into its world of sounds at once. True to his polystylistic approach, Schnittke’s work seems to shift shapes and change colors at all times, covering in spirit (and sometimes quotation), the musical world from Bach via Beethoven to Ligeti. And yet there is nothing incoherent or quilt-like about the work: everything Schnittke does is well integrated into the quartet’s fabric. His subversive shifts from harmonically conventional invented and real quotations are ever scrumptious.

While being engrossed by a faultless performance of a slightly less familiar work (this being the first time I heard this Schnittke quartet in concert), it is difficult to say how much admiration belongs to just the performance aspects, how much to the choice of work, and how much to the composition itself. Fortunately, only the jury has to concern itself with that. (I am hoping that Schnittke’s anti-modernist style is not still considered “polito-musicologically incorrect” and discriminated against.) The audience meanwhile can just sit back, silently tap along, and smile broadly.

Notes from the ARD Intl. Music Competition: Day 2: Viola Competition, Round 1 (2) (September 2) Day 3: Viola Competition, Round 1 (3) (September 3) Day 4: Viola Competition, Round 1 (4) (September 4) Day 5: String Quartet Competition, Round 1 (1) (September 5) Day 6: String QuartetCompetition, Round 1 (2) (September 6) Day 7: String QuartetCompetition, Round 1 (3) (September 7) Day 8: String QuartetCompetition, Round 2 (1) and Viola, Semi-Finals (September 8) Day 9: String QuartetCompetition, Round 2 (2) (September 9) Day 10: Viola, Final (September 10) Day 11: String Quartet, Semi-Finals (September 11) Day 12: Clarinet, Final (September 12) Days 13 & 14: String Quartet & Bassoon Finals (September 13 & 14)

The Galatea Quartet opened with Ligeti’s String Quartet No.1, “Métamorphoses nocturnes”. The humor and peculiar Béla Bartók-inspired nocturnal sounds are embedded in rather tranquil material, the dancin’ and rockin’ moments of which come a little late for impatient or unsympathetic listeners. But when they do come, they will jolt one way or the other, before Ligeti falls back into a mysterious, murmuring tone. A good performance by this Swiss/Japanese group, but not up to the level of how I have heard this work before, either on record or live. Brahms’ op.51/2 followed, laudably light after the wobbly beginning, but threatening to fall apart. The cellist was notably playful, the inner movements (apart from some struggle with intonation) bland, and the finale precise again, and aptly aggressive.

Only me and fellow doubters of the Brahms quartets’ merits will have been disappointed by the Polish boys from the Apollon Musagete, a favorite after the first round, to have chosen op.51/1 instead of one of the late Dvořák quartets, which were also an option. The group’s choice of Lutosławski’s quartet from 1964 meanwhile was understandable given the common idiom and likelihood that their countryman’s quartet has long been part of their repertoire. The first movements of the Lutosławski quartet had been intriguing and entertaining with the Gémeaux Quartet, too. But it could well take a Polish quartet intimately familiar with the work to rescue it from the lengths of the meanders latter half. With Apollon Musagetes, the quick glissandi stood out (like a cheeping birthday shout-out to Messiaen), as did how the first violinist (in keeping with Bruce Dickinson’s dictum) “really explored the space” with his pizzicatos. They succeeded with Lutosławski in that even the ending, though still demanding very active listening, was suspenseful and subjectively shorter.

Heaves & Pomerray, the British/South African Quartet, played the same Brahms as the colleagues who preceded them, but they didn’t play it the same way. Thankfully, as it turned out, because every one of those four movements was good, not to say stupendous. They tackled the first movement at a fine clip, never letting the music grind them down. There were genuine touches of delight in the second movement and complete evenness among the four voices (unlike in round one) from which the instruments emerged to sing; quiet passages were hesitant, but never halting. The elegant momentum was continued into and through the third movement, they sounded much less hard working than Apollon Musagete, and the accuracy and expressiveness of the finale sealed a Brahmsian triumph. The Bavarian Radio, which records all performances from the second round on, might as well press that one straight to disc.

Their Second Quartet of Ligeti – in my mind the unofficial soundtrack to David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” – furthered this good impression. Ligeti’s work is a terrific panoply of weird evocations. The first movement virtually requires the audience to hold its breath. Later on, the notes become little ants crawling down your back, intermittently dancing a Sarabande. Brutality, at last, comes out in the fourth movement, just before the twilight rises in the finale with dawn approaching in rich colors before the movement begins to bustle, teeming with life again. Very nicely done, indeed, and the only obvious choice for a semi-final inclusion among the participants of the second round.

Last for the day was the Verus Quartet, a favorite after their mature and very cultivated performance in the first round. Brahms op.51/2 and that dreary Shostakovich 13^th quartet were their program. In as unthankful a work as the latter, a quartet is less likely to rouse (as with Schnittke, or proper Ligeti) – and so they have to rely on impressing them and the jury, which can be something quite different. The supreme technical capabilities that the Verus Quartet had already shown undoubtedly favored them, but DSCH – even no.13 – cannot live on accuracy and polish alone. Grit is of the essence, and top-notch Shostakovich really ought to sweat blood. The Verus Quartet’s Shostakovich didn’t even perspire, although it was accurate and distinguished, alright. Did they think: “Knock on wood, let's hope we’ll advance”?

Their Brahms was perhaps the disappointment of the day: Expecting so much from them, they delivered something less than precise, neither full bodied nor particularly elegant… a compromise that only worked in the third movement, and even there not very well. The finale was a little unhinged, but at least that they played as though they meant it. There was no doubt they would advance into the finale (as they did), but solely on their first round performance, I’d say.

Recommended recordings of the string quartets played in this round:

Mendelssohn, String Quartet No.6, op.80, Eroica Quartet . Schnittke, String Quartet No.3, Kronos Quartet

Brahms, String Quartet op.51/2, Mandelring Quartett . Ligeti, Quartet No.1, Hagen Quartett

Brahms, String Quartet No.1, op.51/1, Alban Berg Quartet . Lutoslawski, Quartet for Strings, Hagen Quartett (ArkivCD)

Ligeti, String Quartet No.2, Arditti Quartet . Shostakovich, String Quartet No.13, Shostakovich Quartet

The Mandelring String Quartet at the LoC

Haydn does not get his due in concert halls in this country – but at least in chamber music recitals his neglect is not as pronounced as in all other genres. (When was the last time you heard a Haydn symphony in concert?!) It took a German string quartet (after all, Germans owe their national anthem to a Haydn string quartet) to program the first Haydn of the season: last Friday at the Library of Congress, where the Mandelring Quartett performed op. 20, no. 3 – a work that is not any less delightful than its more famous successors for still having been a pioneer of the string quartet form as we know it.

The three Schmidt siblings Sebastian, Nanette (violins), and Bernhard (cello) who form the quartet together with violist Roland Glassl gave this effortlessly charming piece all the lightness, cohesion, and delicacy that it needed. A true ensemble, they played ‘as one’ – with notably beautiful viola-playing and tone from Mr. Glass. If their performance is not going to make audiences demand more Haydn on concert programs, nothing will. To think that Haydn went on to write 40 more string quartets after op. 20 (altogether he wrote 70 to 76, depending on attribution issues) dazzles the mind.

‘Dead’ is good business – a darkly ironic but nonetheless true maxim (Tower records registers record sales, these days) – and György Ligeti probably never saw such a run on recordings of his works as has occurred since June of 2006, when this fabulously precocious and playful composer died at 83. In concert, it should be admitted, his string quartets did not need that rather morbid enticement; they were played frequently enough… with great gusto and usually to a very receptive crowd (Left Bank, Pacifica, Brentano). Certainly the sophisticated selection of ears that turns out to the Library of Congress’s events knew how to appreciate this nocturnal, creepy-crawly, eerie, and delectable music as well as a pristine and generous performance of it.

J.Brahms (& F.Gernsheim), SQ4t op.51/1 (& op.31), Mandelring Quartet audite

Ligeti is one of the most accessible avant-garde composers - largely due to his utter lack of dogmatism. His works are not theory experiments, manifest hypotheses, or aural dissertations… but emotions expressed directly, in a modern language. His second quartet is one such work and after the Brentano Quartet’s performance earlier this year at the Corcoran, it was very good to hear it again.

You know a great performance of any of the Brahms String Quartets if you have enjoyed it. All high-brow (with big furrows on it), these works cannot attain the easy-going humor, unburdened joy, and musicality of Haydn’s examples. Beethoven’s masterpieces are not matched in ingenuity or the way the material is laid out in a spiritually compelling manner. Full of great ideas, the obsession with delivering perfect craftsmanship and something determinedly worthy of his famous predecessors in this genre (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert), Brahms’ quartets always sound like ‘trying too hard’ to me. Lulled by momentary beauty or enthralled by a particularly propulsive motif I am fascinated with plenty in op. 51, no. 1 – but once such a passage passes by, I cannot seem to recall it or carry the feeling over to whatever comes next. If the Mandelring Quartet (named after the street the Schmidt siblings lived on) failed to keep everyone focused on the music, their engaged (though not faultless) performance was not to blame.

Ligeti Essentials

Ligeti Project I Ligeti Project II Ligeti Project III Ligeti Project IV Ligeti Project V Ligeti - Concertos Ligeti - String Quartets Ligeti - Le Grand Macabre

Ligeti - V.1 Ligeti - V.2 Ligeti - V.3 Ligeti - V.4 Ligeti - V.5 Ligeti - V.6 Ligeti - V.7

György Ligeti (*1923) is dead. Although getting to know his music might have been a better idea when he was still alive (at the very least he would have profited from it financially), it has been long known – even before the Beatles declared Paul McCartney dead – that death sells. If you don’t know much of Ligeti’s music, you might as well make this your excuse to catch up on one of the finest and most versatile composers of the second half of the 20th century. Ligeti, whose music was suppressed and often written for the drawer in his native Hungary, became an early member of the Darmstadt school of music (think Nono, Stockhausen, Boulez, but also Xenakis, very early Penderecki, Kagel, Lachenmann, Maderna) where, after emigration, he led some of the “International Summer-Courses.” Later on, he freed himself from what he thought too limiting a view of music – one suspects that the room for humor that can be heard over and over in his music was somewhat lacking in the ideologically narrow modernism of that school and era. He became a professor at the Hamburg Music Academy in 1973.

His string quartets, performed on at least three occasions in the last season (see side-box), are de rigeur; splendid, entertaining, eerie works full of buzzing insects, nightscapes, and ear-perking quirks. If you like David Lynch films, you should also like these chamber works. There have been several recordings of those two works (all of them very well played); most recently the Artemis Quartet’s rendition on Virgin – although I prefer previous recordings of the modernist specialists, the Arditti Quartet (volume 1 in Sony’s unfinished Ligeti collection; coupled with the violin duo Ballade and Dance, the violin-cello duo Hommage à Hilding Rosenberg, and the two movements for string quartet) and the LaSalle Quartet (on DG 20/21, coupled with Ramifications, for 12 strings, the cello sonata, and Melodien, for orchestra). For the price and couplings, I’d go with the Arditti.

The piano sonatas, too, are something else; it is the kind of music that Pierre-Laurent Aimard made his name with – his recording (volume 3 in the Sony series) being the prime example. Not only is the music worth hearing (Charles mentioned it already), but the playing is some of the finest and most dazzling pianism caught on record. Aimard also plays the astounding, blazing piano concerto on the Pierre Boulez-conducted Deutsche Grammophon disc that combines this work with the violin and cello concertos (Saschko Gawriloff and Jean-Guihen Queyras are the performers). Aimard recorded it once more, for the Teldec Ligeti cycle that completed what Sony couldn’t. Aimard is in any case the only player you will want to hear this with – and unless you are going to collect the Teldec series, the DG is the more attractive disc; the playing impeccable in either case, the sound good on both discs.

Ligeti on Ionarts: György Ligeti Becomes "Blue Velvet" in the Hands of the Brentano Quartet (February 15, 2006) Boston Symphony: Yo-Yo Ma & David Robertson (March 19, 2006) Ligeti with the Pacifica Quartet (April 11, 2005) Left Bank Ligeti (May 09, 2005) Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre in San Francisco (November 12, 2004

For an example of avant-garde music with wry humor, go no further than the fifth volume of the Sony edition – the album of Ligeti’s “Mechanical Music” – written for (largely) human-less instruments: player piano, prepared barrel organ, and most intriguingly, his Poème symphonique, for 100 metronomes, 10 performers & 1 conductor. Perched somewhere between the comically absurd (although ever intriguing) and academic (the studies of different times, which remind of projects of Cage and the ideas behind some of the Carter string quartets), this is an ear-opener for what classical music of the kind you thought you did not like (for, on occasion, admittedly good reasons) can do. The "performers" are technicians starting the metronomes; the conductor is window dressing.


Ligeti’s opera, Le Grand Macabre, finally, is a hoot – albeit a very dark one – and you might as well go for the whole thing, in German as it is on the complete recording for Wergo. (The Mysteries from the opera can be heard, in English, on volume 4 of the Sony edition.) It is as different from most of the above-mentioned pieces of music as you can expect from Ligeti; predictable only in Ligeti’s own, unique unpredictability. (Charles previously commented on the San Francisco production in 2004.)