Gyorgy Ligeti Edition 7:: Chamber Music
These chamber works bring Sony's adventurous, timely Ligeti series to a natural pinnacle. Long the challenger of stylistic stasis and customary demonstrations of excellence, Ligeti has outdone himself here (as he did with the fantasticMechanical Musicrelease). The Trio for Violin, Horn, and Piano (1982) challenges its players to stay in step with each other even while expanding virtuosity to the breaking point. Marie-Luise Neunecker plays such full horn parts that they roll flow over the tonal bounds, as does Saschko Gawriloff's violin and Pierre-Laurent Aimard's piano. The Ten Pieces for Wind Quintet (1968) and Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet (1953) are each pivoted on a mixture of elongated and quickly abrupted figures. The wind quintets echo Neunecker's horn parts in their extensions of typical note ranges. Ligeti writes in the liner essay about looking to script extremities. The power of the writing comes across in the mottled mix of multiple instrumental pitches, making these fantastic.--Andrew Bartlett