BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra Plays Xenakis, Debussy, Ligeti & Bartók (15 December 2022)

Concert broadcast from Glasgow last month, with the announcer opening on a Xenakis quote: "savageness is part of everyday life".  With such a weighty introduction, you'd be expecting some fireworks, and the musicians of the BBC SSO certainly deliver in the opening blast of Xenakis' computer-composed Atrées.  But there's subtlety too, in the sumptuous rendering of Debussy's Jeux that fills out the concert's first half.

Ilan Volkov, a conductor I always like for his relish for the avant-garde, talks us through the tuning used for Ligeti's Ramifications before taking the two groups of strings into the piece's still-remarkable miasma of sound.  The grand finale is another landmark in 20th century music, Bartók's Music For Strings, Percussion & Celesta, sounding riveting all the way from the grand sweep at its outset through the eerie third movement and beyond.

link

pw: sgtg

Iannis Xenakis at SGTG:

Akea, Ittidra, À. R,, piano fragment  

Palimpsest, Épéi, Dikhtas, Akanthos

Pour La Paix/Voyage Absolu   

Nuits  

Rebonds B  

Akrata  

Atrées, Morsima-Amorsima etc  

Evryali/Herma   

Phlegra, Jalons etc
Oresteïa
Synaphaï
Persephassa
Ata, Jonchaies etc
Pléiades/Psappha
Bohor etc
Kraanerg
Terretektorh/Nomos Gamma
La Légende D'Eer
Persepolis

 

György Ligeti at SGTG:

Clear Or Cloudy: Complete Recordings On Deutsche Grammophon

Requiem, Aventures, Nouvelles Aventures 

Artikulation

György Ligeti - Clear Or Cloudy: Complete Recordings On Deutsche Grammophon (2006 compi, rec. 1968-96)

An epic, five-hour immersion in the music of one of the most extraordinary avant-garde composers of the 20th century - and one of the best known, thanks in no small part to Stanley Kubrick.  György Sándor Ligeti was born in Transylvania in 1923, and this box set was released to mark his death in 2006, and to collect all of the recordings of his music for the DG label.

Sequenced in roughly chronological order, the box first highlights some of Ligeti's least-known works from his time in Budapest in the early 1950s.  This chamber music barely hints at the otherwordliness to come, but still managed to fall foul of official censors, and wasn't performed in its entirety for some time afterwards - in fact, these are the most recent recordings in the set.  Disc 1 is rounded out by the 10 Pieces For Wind Quintet and Second String Quartet, both from 1968 when Ligeti had settled in Vienna and was about to unleash his most memorable music.

Disc 2, then, collects the familiar stuff from Ligeti at the height of his powers, and was re-released as a single-disc compilation in 2012.  The dense, slowly shifting microtonality of his orchestral works like Atmospheres, Lux Aeterna and Lontano is here, along with two stunning pieces for solo organ.  The only work Ligeti would produce that's more alien-sounding than this period would be his brief foray into electronic music under Stockhausen at WDR in the late 50s, but all that really survives of that is Artikulation, which never appeared on a DG record so is missing here - find it on this compilation.

Disc 3 takes us further into the 60s and early 70s, with the vocal works Aventures & Nouvelles Aventures (alternate recordings on Wergo in link at the bottom), plus more concertos.  Announced with a snippet of solo trumpet, Disc 4 covers late-period Ligeti, as his focus turned to rhythm and syncopation, with some piano pieces.  Then his last two great concertos, one for piano and one for violin, prove that Ligeti was still a unique voice into the 80s and 90s.  An absolutely stunning collection, taking in all the major bases of a unique genius.

Disc 1 link
Disc 2 link
Disc 3 link
Disc 4 link
pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
Requiem, plus Wergo versions of Aventures/Nouvelles Aventures

Electronic Music For The Mind And Body (2013 compilation, rec. 1958-62)

Cheekily parodying the title of Country Joe & The Fish's legendary psych classic, this inspired compilation from Cherry Red's él subsidiary turned back the clock a further decade for 80 minutes of truly revolutionary sound warping.  The first 35 of these 80 minutes is an entire album in itself, originally composed and recorded 1959-60: Stockhausen's still-astonishing Kontakte.  Working at WDR with Gottfried Michael Koenig, Stockhausen laid out his grandest vision yet of electronic tones, timbres and (in live situations) spatial movement.  A second version would later add in David Tudor's piano and Christoph Caskel's percussion.  Whether in that form or in this pure electronic recording, it remains a magnificent, otherworldly soundscape to get lost in.

Next up on this CD is Iannis Xenakis' Orient-Occident, already featured here, devised in 1960 as a film soundtrack for Enrico Fuchignoni, and featuring a definite Pierre Schaeffer influence.  The shortest piece on the compilation is György Ligeti's Artikulation, recorded at WDR in 1958 with the assistance of Koenig and Cornelius Cardew.  One of only two electronic pieces that Ligeti would fully realise, Artikulation certainly packs a lot into its four minutes, arranging different recordings of noises before piecing them together at random into a 'conversation' of sorts, as if inventing a new machine-language.

Lastly, we get two pieces of prime John Cage.  The 20-minute Cartridge Music was composed in 1960 for performers following a chance score, armed with phonograph cartridges and contact microphones which are then struck against various objects.  This recording is an amalgamation of four performances of the score by Cage and David Tudor in 1962.  The final track on the CD is Aria With Fontana Mix, another 1962 recording overlaying two Cage compositions - his free-score Fontana Mix (much more noisily used by Max Neuhaus a few years later) is used for various tape sources, whilst Cathy Berberian performs his vocal work Aria over the top.

link

György Ligeti - Requiem / Aventures / Nouvelles Aventures (1985 compi, rec '66/'68)

Could probably have come up with a much more apt halloween post if I put my mind to it, but this'll do the job.  Nicely chosen Bosch detail as the CD cover for starters; a good fit for one of the eeriest requiems ever conceived, as if sung from beyond the grave.  When I first bought this, I got all the expected flashbacks to 2001: Space Odyssey, but once immersed in the full work I soon discovered what a devastatingly effective 'mass for the dead' it really was.

Ligeti completed his Requiem for two choirs, orchestra and soprano soloists in 1965, and its dense, shimmering clustered chromaticism shot into the public consciousness a few years later thanks to Kubrick.  I'd forgotten until writing this that there's also a little of Ligeti's Aventures (1962) at the end of 2001, making it a good companion piece on this CD, as is Nouvelles Aventures (1965), both fascinating pieces of avant-garde vocalisation.

link