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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
March 21, 2014
An interviewer once asked György Ligeti about his 1951 work, the Grande symphonie militaire, Op.69 (the work was later withdrawn).
"Oh, that was a joke", the composer replied, "the opus number refers of course to the sexual position".
Ligeti was one of several contenders for the crown of Enfant Terrible of the 1960s avant-garde, a rôle he clearly relished, yet behind the the easily-caricatured façade, he was an original thinker and highly accomplished technician.
Ligeti's Violin Concerto is a relatively late work and went through two revisions before reaching its final form. It is notoriously difficult to play - and not just for the soloist: there are a solo violin and viola in the accompaniment, these are directed to tune to the seventh harmonic of the double bass's G string and the fifth harmonic of its A string, respectively, making the violin 45 cents (i.e. 45% of a semitone) and the viola 14 cents flat. The wind players are also expected to produce microtonal intervals and four of them also have to play ocarinas.
Friday's Sonic Lab concert, the opening salvo in the Ligeti Festival, closed with a stunning performance of what has been called the least often heard great violin concerto.
Soloist Müge Büyükçelen was mesmerising, from start to finish. This is an extremely taxing part, both technically and physically, and she was more than up to the challenge, whether it was the non-stop arpeggios of the opening movement, the lyricism of the second or the angularity of the fifth. Ligeti directs that the performer provide their own cadenza for the finale; Büyükçelen's dazzling playing of her own version of that of Saschko Gawriloff (the work's dedicatee and soloist in the premieres of all three versions) held the audience in the palm of her hand.
Ajtony Csaba directed an excellent accompaniment, his twenty-two players dealing with Ligeti's at times extravagant technical demands with aplomb and considerable accuracy.
For an encore, the very brief and noisy third movement was reprised - and seemed even better second time around.
Shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Luciano Berio composed O King in his memory. The text of the piece consists solely of King's name - or, to be precise, until the final bars, just the vowels and consonants of his name.
I first heard the composer conduct the version for eight voices and orchestra (incorporated into Sinfonia) some forty-five years ago and was looking forward to this performance immensely, both because I love the music and because I had never, as far as I can recall, heard the "chamber" version - scored for voice, flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano - before.
Maria Eduarda Mendes Martins conducted a fine, flowing performance of the music, with soprano Heather MacLeod capturing the solo vocal part to perfection and blending marvellously with the instruments, all of which were similarly excellent.
Well worth the wait.
I had not encountered the music of Pierluigi Billone before the opening piece, Verticale muto (the online translators offer "vertical silent" or "vertical dumb").
Although Billone clearly has a fair sonic imagination - there were some wildly unconventional methods of sound production employed, even though some of them (banging the chest with the wrist, or banging the wrists together, for instance) were totally inaudible to anyone except the players - the piece did not really seem to go anywhere. I spent the first ten minutes enjoying the ride, the next five wondering when it would end and the last ten wishing it would end.
As far as I could tell the work was played extremely well, but I'm afraid I shall not be adding Billone to my personal "must hear" list.
Having said which, overall this was an excellent evening's music-making and a fine start to the Ligeti Festival.
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