Ligeti, Gyorgy

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    Review: The Philharmonic Feasts on ‘The Planets’

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    Under Dima Slobodeniouk, the orchestra played works by Holst and Ligeti and, for the first time, Julia Perry’s somber “Stabat Mater.”Holst’s “The Planets” is one of the Thanksgiving feasts of classical music. It seduces with variety of color and texture — just as tangy cranberry compote refreshes after buttery mashed potatoes — but tends to leave you overstuffed.I’ve never heard it when it wasn’t at least a little too much. But, played with vigor by the New York Philharmonic under Dima Slobodeniouk on Wednesday evening at David Geffen Hall, it didn’t have me moaning with overindulgence, as some “Planets” performances do. It felt like an ideal way to ring in a holiday that’s all about bounty.There was punchiness in “Mars” and genuine playfulness in “Mercury,” and Slobodeniouk was agile in guiding the orchestra through the hairpin transitions of “Jupiter.” That section’s noble hymn theme was less strings-heavy than usual, flowing with ease.That Ligeti’s “Atmosphères” is, like “The Planets,” indelibly associated with the extraterrestrial is due less to its title than to its inclusion (without its composer’s permission) in the soundtrack of “2001: A Space Odyssey.”Written in 1961, not quite half a century after Holst’s tone poem, the sumptuously eerie “Atmosphères” on Wednesday felt a bit like the son or grandson of “The Planets.” Ligeti’s queasily unsettled sound world seemed a direct descendant of the stunned stillness at the start of “Saturn,” the uneasy simmering after the march drops out in “Uranus” and the gaseous, hovering mystery of “Neptune.” Neither of these works was played with super-polish at Geffen, but under Slobodeniouk both had vibrant drama.Those tried and true “Planets” aside, this wasn’t a concert of chestnuts. The orchestra revived “Atmosphères” to cap its commemorations this fall of Ligeti’s centennial; it hasn’t presented the piece (except as it’s excerpted in the “2001” score) since 1978. And it is performing Julia Perry’s 1951 “Stabat Mater” this week for the first time ever.Perry’s brief “Study for Orchestra” was, in 1965, the first music by a Black woman to be played on a Philharmonic subscription program. It was brought back last year, but the “Stabat Mater,” scored for strings and a vocalist, is a far more powerful work. Heated yet subtle and restrained, the piece’s 10 sections on a Latin text, lasting about 20 minutes in all, chart an intimate drama whose moments of grandeur are all the more effective given the overall modesty.In the short prelude, light yet pungent pizzicato plucks — amid brooding low strings and an elegiac solo violin — movingly evoke Jesus’s mother’s tears without feeling too obvious. Throughout, Perry gives both voice and orchestra an appealing combination of Neo-Baroque angularity and post-Romantic warmth. The quivering, high-pitched flames of “the fire of love” near the end are reminders that this piece and “Atmosphères” date from the same era.The mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges sang with oracular authority in the somber vocal lines, rising to flashes of intensity. There were passages in which a more encompassing, contralto-style richness in the low register would have filled out this music. But Bridges’s focused tone was just right for Perry’s poignant austerity.The violinist Sheryl Staples, in the concertmaster chair, played with sweetness and eloquence in both the “Stabat Mater” and Holst’s “Venus.” That section of “The Planets” also featured a beautifully mellow flute solo by Alison Fierst, leading into rhapsodic lines from the orchestra’s longtime principal cello, Carter Brey.Oh, and for at least one night, the “fireflies” — the lights over the Geffen stage that do a flickering up-and-down dance before concerts, in corny imitation of the chandeliers that rise before curtain at the Metropolitan Opera next door — were stilled.Might they stay that way forevermore? That would be something to be thankful for.New York PhilharmonicThis program repeats through Saturday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      Review: Ligeti’s Fascinating Polyrhythm at the New York Phil

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      The conductor Susanna Mälkki led a program centered on Ligeti’s Piano Concerto, propelled by the soloist Pierre-Laurent Aimard.On Thursday, the conductor Susanna Mälkki led the New York Philharmonic at David Geffen Hall in an unusually cohesive program built around the bizarro sound world of Ligeti’s Piano Concerto. It was part of the orchestra’s centennial celebrations of the composer.Written in the 1980s, the piece draws its lifeblood from Ligeti’s remarkable rhythmic sense. The piano soloist works out asymmetrical accents from interlocking metrical units while also maintaining composure in scales and running 16th notes. On the surface, there’s a high degree of independence among the wailing strings, fluorescent woodwinds and intricate percussion, but as Pierre-Laurent Aimard, the Philharmonic’s soloist, recently told The New York Times: “It’s a work that renews polyphony through fascinating polyrhythm.” The chaos has a way of coming together if a listener stops resisting it.The concerto seems frozen between states, its harmonic center melting away without ever evaporating, but in Mälkki’s expert hands, it could sound almost traditional in structure. In the first movement, she lined up emphatic pizzicati with the accents that Aimard plucked out of the solo part. In the second, a siren crescendoed into a blaring signal whistle to herald the piano’s violent re-entry — a satisfying climax built from unusual means. The music seemed to levitate with the centrifugal force of rampaging bongos. The strange postludes that close out the second movement (scored for Chromonica) and the fifth (a duet for xylophone and piano) were gripping afterthoughts.The crisp acoustic of the recently renovated hall enhanced Ligeti’s rhythmic vivacity. The orchestra sounded warm and precise, with a tone that was full but not fatty. In the Lento e deserto, the work’s only slow movement, the lonely yowlings of piccolo, bassoon and slide whistle formed a tender yet humorous trio.Mälkki folded the piano into the texture like a firing engine, enabling Aimard, a longtime friend and champion of the composer, to propel the piece. Aimard, something of an elegant mathematician, handled polyrhythms with a through line and sense of ease. Pianistic effects, like scales, crunchy chord clusters and running 16th notes with multiple voicings, had unfussy finesse. The “leggiero, non legato” (“light, but not connected”) passage in the Presto luminoso had a discrete, glockenspiel-like tone that didn’t turn percussive. Aimard and Mälkki were unable to reach the finish line in the Presto in three minutes or less, as Ligeti requests in the score, but it was nonetheless a bravura performance.The Ligeti crowned the first half of the program, which was themed around Hungarian composers. The Budapest-born musician Jeno Lisztes opened the concert with a dazzling solo arrangement of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 for cimbalom, a traditional Hungarian instrument in the dulcimer family that utilizes a pedal mechanism and mallets that resemble cotton-padded bar spoons. His performance had melancholy grace and a rollicking climax that left me wondering where this symphony of notes was coming from. In Bartók’s brief Romanian Folk Dances, the orchestra sounded sturdy and grounded.After intermission, Mälkki and the orchestra leaned heavily into the grotesquerie that characterizes half of the images that Mussorgsky depicts in “Pictures at an Exhibition.” “Gnomus” had a dangerous agility, both aggressive and surprising, and “Bydlo” was moody and theatrical. The brasses, summoning deep, forbidding power, made a meal of “Catacombae.” The penultimate movement, “The Hut on Hen’s Legs” — and not Mälkki’s muscular take on the magnificent “The Great Gate of Kiev” — provided the piece’s true finale. The hut, which houses a witch of Russian folklore, lurched in gleeful, monstrous ways as its inhabitant sniffed out young children to devour.Mälkki and the players dug into the fantastical elements of “Pictures” as if possessed, almost as though they couldn’t shake off the Ligeti — and after such a tremendous performance, neither could I.New York Philharmonic, conducted by Susanna MälkkiThrough Saturday at David Geffen Hall; nyphil.org More

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      Celebrating the Music of Ligeti: ‘The Incarnation of a Free Spirit’

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      The pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, a friend and collaborator of Ligeti, is helping the New York Philharmonic observe the centennial of his birth.If you are going to salute the composer Gyorgy Ligeti, you might as well ask one of his most dedicated and perceptive collaborators to lend a hand.Ligeti, who died in 2006, and the pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard were more than artistic partners, more than a composer and a sympathetic interpreter; they were friends. So the New York Philharmonic can surely have found no more suitable a soloist than Aimard to help observe the centennial of Ligeti’s birth.“Ligeti was certainly one of the most seminal composers of the latter half of the 20th century,” said Gary Ginstling, the president and chief executive of the Philharmonic. “It’s important, and an honor, for the Philharmonic to celebrate his contributions in collaboration with one of his greatest champions, Pierre-Laurent Aimard.”And the Philharmonic, which began its Ligeti tribute a couple of weeks ago with a program featuring the “Concert Romanesc” and “Mifiso la Sodo” under the conductor David Robertson, is going to keep Aimard busy.On Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Aimard, 66, will join Susanna Mälkki at David Geffen Hall for performances of Ligeti’s Piano Concerto. He has recorded that work three times, if you count a fascinating documentary he made with Pierre Boulez and Ensemble Intercontemporain.But if anything, Aimard’s relationship with Ligeti’s formidable, witty Études is closer still; many of them were written with him in mind. For a Saturday Nightcap concert, Aimard and a fellow pianist, Joachim Kühn, will draw links from selected Études to jazz. And on Tuesday, back at Geffen, Aimard will connect the Études and other works to Beethoven, Chopin and Debussy. The Philharmonic, in addition, is mounting an archival exhibition that includes manuscripts lent to it for the occasion.Aimard talked in a recent interview about his relationship with Ligeti, who lost most of his family during the Holocaust and fled Hungary during the uprising of 1956, and offered some reflections on the composer’s place in music today. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.Take me back to when you and Ligeti met, in the 1980s. What struck you about him?I met him at a rehearsal of “Aventures” and “Nouvelles Aventures,” one of his most eccentric compositions, and I was struck by both his freedom and imagination, and his wish to realize every sound product in the most achieved way. This mix of inner freedom and care in craftsmanship was extraordinary. He was always inspiring in the way he spoke about his musical visions, with astonishing metaphors, ideas, suggestions, and at the same time he was very demanding, always fighting for quality.Gyorgy Ligeti, left, with Aimard. The two met in the 1980s and remained close until the composer’s death in 2006.Louise DuchesneauLigeti came to maturity at a particularly turbulent time in Hungarian history. Did his music have a particular message, to you?Which music doesn’t carry a message? First of all, all the discoveries, an extraordinary era of discoveries in science, all possible fields of knowledge. Then, it was also a period of great discovery for artists. He was in contact with everything that was new in any artistic territory and would absorb that as well. But also, he was a part of the history of his century, and was part of it quite dramatically, quite tragically. This part, this dark dimension, was always in him.Some of his music has that sense of tragedy to it, but also a sense of humor.Definitely. It was music that never fell into pathos, because he was too attracted by life. So, all the antidotes against pathos were there, including humor, and sometimes dark humor.It’s hard to speak generally about influence, but in what ways does Ligeti’s music have an influence on composers today?He belonged to a generation of avant-gardists who opened hundreds of doors, and consequently, yes, he influenced generations of very different creators. His music is not avant-garde anymore; pages have been turned in between. Even if our era is not an avant-garde era artistically at all, on the contrary, he is an extraordinary, living part of the past. But the past can still face us with very appropriate questions, I think.What kinds of questions does Ligeti ask?Well, all the destabilizing ones that he does in his creations.During your time with the New York Philharmonic, you are putting Ligeti in the context of folk music, jazz and the classical tradition. Where did that extraordinary range in his music come from?He was an open-minded man who loved and shared independence, paid for that at a very high price in his life, but lived like that on a daily basis. For me, he was the incarnation of a free spirit, really. One could never manipulate him. He would never follow models; he would create all the time.All the Études are so different in their own way, yet so characteristically him.Well, they are different because he had a lot of fantasy, and was interested in many layers of our past and our present, and consequently incorporated a lot in his music. I don’t think there is a dramaturgy that doesn’t work among them. If so, he would have left it in the wastepaper basket.Do you have a favorite among the Études? Is there one that you think is particularly characteristic of your work with him, or just of him?Of course, these possible favorites change; the more I work on them the more I discover the richness, the way how he could balance and compose, extremely carefully, each identity: identity of textures, identity of movements, of polyrhythms. I’m not a preacher of this music, I’m an interpreter, so I try to have the closest and best possible contact with each of the pieces I try to make present onstage.How would you describe the Piano Concerto for somebody who does not know it?I would avoid describing it too briefly, the work is so rich. It’s a work that renews polyphony through fascinating polyrhythm, and a piece in which his own fantasy reinvents the relationship between the soloist and the group of players in five different ways. There are five movements in the piece.Do you think of it as a kind of chamber concerto?It’s a chamber concerto with highly virtuosic soloists, a bunch of them, because the part for each instrumentalist is challenging. So, this is, let’s say, for a group of kamikaze.It hasn’t been played by the New York Philharmonic for seven years, and only twice in the history of the orchestra. Do you think that is because of that difficulty?It is true that it is challenging, and I’m not the only one who has played this piece who thinks that, in terms of challenging concertos, this one is really at the top. I don’t think that the difficulty is a problem; the difficulty is a challenge. The question mark is more, I think, understanding the language. When a new language appears, it takes time to be absorbed. For instance, a great majority of my young colleagues play some, if not several, of the Ligeti Études. So, it has taken a bit of time — but not so much. More

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      Review: New York Philharmonic Welcomes Back an Old Friend

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      David Robertson returned to the podium to lead the orchestra’s first in a series of performances to celebrate the centennial of Gyorgy Ligeti’s birth.It’s always a good sign when an orchestra’s players light up with smiles at a conductor.And on Thursday night at David Geffen Hall, that happened over and over, with grins passing between the musicians of the New York Philharmonic and its podium guest, David Robertson, throughout a beguiling, smart program.The concert began the Philharmonic’s festivities to celebrate the centennial of the Hungarian-Austrian composer Gyorgy Ligeti’s birth. Robertson led the U.S. premiere of “Mifiso la Sodo,” a short work for chamber orchestra that Ligeti wrote as a student in Budapest in 1948. He began revisions three years later, but never finished the job; the piece lay dormant until last year.With its punchy, fake Italian title, “Mifiso” is crammed full of little musical jokes, show-off brilliance and jovial accents. Ligeti gave it the subtitle “Cheerful Music,” which is both an ironic riposte to the Stalinesque dictums that ruled the Hungarian arts in the 1940s and ’50s and a true description of this piece.Robertson also resurrected a Ligeti work that the Philharmonic hadn’t played since 2004 (conducted by him back then, too): “Concert Romanesc,” or “Romanian Concerto,” a hurricane of color and exuberant virtuosity from 1951 that draws upon Romanian folk music. In this concerto for orchestra, there’s a particularly charming portion in which the basses pluck away, in gritty gutbucket style, while the violins whirl overhead in a zippy dance.Another concerto — the Russian-born, London-based composer Elena Firsova’s Piano Concerto — provided a marked contrast in a delicate work that inverts the genre’s traditional fast-slow-fast structure. Firsova wrote it in 2020 for Yefim Bronfman, who gave its New York premiere on Thursday. (The performance was also the Philharmonic’s first of Firsova’s music.)Firsova’s concerto diverged from the energy of Ligeti by ushering in a meditative pause with a solitudinous, brief introduction. One of her main themes is a wistful, upward-spiraling scale that darts through the piano and the various instruments of the orchestra. Near the end, she retreats into evanescent, gossamer textures from which a haunting, music box-like set of patterns emerges from the glockenspiel, vibraphone, tubular bells and the piano, which is played near the top of its range. Bronfman, an assiduous supporter of Firsova’s work, played with commanding surety.The evening’s second half was devoted to Brahms’s Serenade No. 1, which originally was envisioned as a small chamber piece, but then Brahms kept expanding it. In its final version, the piece’s instrumentation is still lithe — just two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, French horns and trumpets, plus timpani and strings — but the winds and brasses in particular brought in a welcome plushness. The phrasing, under Robertson’s baton, was shapely and intentional, while tracing a persuasive through line back from Ligeti at the start of the program.Robertson’s name has been raised from time to time over the years as a potential music director of the Philharmonic. While that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon, those big grins from players across the stage — not to mention their committed, warm performances — made the musicians’ feelings clear.New York PhilharmonicThrough Saturday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More