Ligeti -- RIP

Sad news, and I had not already heard this.

Sincerely, Fredrik

I was at a concert at last summer's Edinburgh festival, the absolute highlight of which was a performance of his '100 metronomes' piece which is a wonderful spectacle (though in the sense of such absurdity nothing would cap the performance the year before of Salvatore Sciarrino's The mouth, the feet, the sound).

regards, Tam

just a month or so ago Salonen with teh LA Phil performed Ligeti's requium which is only ther first part of the hell and damnation part, he couldn't bring himself to write a glorious resurrection due to his WW2 work camp experience. Second half was Beethoven's 9th, which was fabulous. I couldn't have imagined a more polar opposite pairing of works which it was meant to be. The first being so cold and austeer against the warmth of the later. Don't expect one Ligeti piece to be like another tho.

I shall never forget I was at the Royal Festival Hall for an organ recital given by Xavier Darasse in March 1971. The final work in the recital was to be a performance of Volumina by Ligeti, an avant-garde work which explores textural extremes. The work's public performance had been set back by many refusals because of its unique demands of starting and stopping the blowers and other technical demands. This performance was no exception... as I recall, the start of the piece required the player the depress most of the keys on the manuals by laying his arms across them all with a very full registration...with the blowers turned off.... and then the blowers are started. This caused the fuses on the organ to blow after the first chord..and the mighty Harrison organ fell silent!

Michael, sounds like a slight oversight on the composer's part to not understand the limitations of the instrament. It's interesting work tho Ligeti for me is an interesting accent in a concert, I wouldn't want a full dose of it.

Wolf.... indeed.... I cannot imagine the great J S Bach doing such a thing as he was acutely aware of the instruments, and their capabilities, which he had at his disposal at that time.

Needless to say a slightly bemused audience left the RFH and headed for home!

(Thank goodness it was at the end of the programme and not the beginning!)

Along similar lines, I was at a concert at last year's Aldeburgh festival where Ades managed to break the piano (it was one of those works that requires gloves and quite a lot of thumping).

Fortunately they were able to wheel out a spare baby grand.

regards, Tam

Some day someone's gonna do McCartney one better and drop a grand on the stage from 30 feet and see what that sounds like at the end of a piece.