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| The Ligeti Project I: Melodien / Chamber Concerto / Piano Concerto / Mysteries of the Macabre - Schoenberg Ensemble / ASKO Ensemble / Reinbert de Leeuw | 
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| Artists: Reinbert De Leeuw, Schonberg Ensemble
Creators: Gyorgy Ligeti, Asko Ensemble, Schoenberg Ensemble, Pierre-laurent Aimard, Peter Masseurs
Label: Teldec
Category: Music
List Price: $16.98
Buy New: $10.47
You Save: $6.51 (38%)
Buy New/Used from $7.77
Avg. Customer Rating:  (11 reviews)
Sales Rank: 115862
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
MPN: 83953
UPC: 685738395323
EAN: 0685738395323
ASIN: B000059QW8
Release Date: June 19, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Tracks:
| • | Melodien - Schonberg Ens/Reinbert De Leeuw | | • | Chm Con: I. Corrente (Fliessend) - Schonberg Ens/Reinbert De Leeuw | | • | Chm Con: II. Calmo, Sostenuto - Schonberg Ens/Reinbert De Leeuw | | • | Chm Con: III. Movimento Preciso E Meccanico - Schonberg Ens/Reinbert De Leeuw | | • | Chm Con: IV. Presto - Schonberg Ens/Reinbert De Leeuw | | • | Pno Con: I. Vivace Molto Ritmico E Preciso - Pierre-Laurent Aimard | | • | Pno Con: II. Lento E Deserto - Pierre-Laurent Aimard | | • | Pno Con: III. Vivace Cantabile - Pierre-Laurent Aimard | | • | Pno Con: IV. Allegro Risoluto, Molto Ritmico - Pierre-Laurent Aimard | | • | Pno Con: V. Presto Luminoso - Pierre-Laurent Aimard | | • | Mysteries Of The Macabre - Peter Masseurs |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com's Best of 2001
This first of a projected five-disc series of Ligeti's music is a perfect introduction to the sound-world of the man who is arguably our greatest living composer. It opens with Melodien, a one-movement, 13-minute piece that begins with swirling, high-pitched winds whose sinuous lines turn into a flowing stream of iridescent instrumental colors. The Chamber Concerto, completed a year earlier, is for 13 instrumentalists treated as virtuosic soloists. Each of its four movements has a distinct profile, from the polyphonic first movement, where the instruments play at different speed, to the chorale-like second, hammering third, and the final presto that builds from a menacing ostinato to the siren squeal of the clarinet at the close. Aimard is the superb soloist in the Piano Concerto. He just about owns this piece, having recorded it with Boulez and Eotvos a decade ago. It's in five movements of endless inventiveness, particularly the second, which moves from desolate quietude to energetic outbursts and peters out with a quiet wind phrase. Mysteries of the Macabre is a reworking for solo trumpet and chamber orchestra of arias from Ligeti's opera, Le Grand Macabre. An essential disc of indispensable music, brilliantly performed and recorded. --Dan Davis
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
Great Project, great CD. June 15, 2006
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
It's not easy to write about Gyoergy Ligeti today, as he has just passed away last Monday, so this is the first review I write about his works with Ligeti death... We know it could happen because of his very weak health, but it hurts when finally it's confirmed that he is not with us... We have his works and that's the most direct way to the immortality, that one Ligeti is living now in our memory and in our ears, those that were filled so many times with his extraordinary music, one of the best I know in the XXth Century, that finally will be Ligeti's century, as his work is quite complete written in that period.
Teldec continued some years ago Sony series of Ligeti music, a break that didn't suffer too much of that change, adding enormous artists like those you can listen in this CD. All the series is an outstanding thing, an some performances are really the best. This was the first CD they launched and it was a really surprise because of the very good performances we can listen, the great recording and the marvellous presentation. Anyway, it was a broken way, because, although Ligeti's series continued till the end, with the 5 volumes, New Line is a project that didn't work very well, with a few CDs released only.
Melodien has the best performance I know in this CD. We had a very interesting one on Atherton hands with the London Sinfonietta, in a very hard to find CD in Decca label, now re-released on DG 20 21 Echo, but I really think this one is much more better, with the enormous precision the Schoenberg Ensemble use to have, and with the taste of the contemporary groups, that really have this works as they basic language. Very good performance of an interesting work, that is not between my favourites of Ligeti.
Kammerkonzert is a piece I really love, from I time in which the Hungarian master was composing some of his most impressive compositions, like his Requiem or the Cello Concert. This Chamber Concerto tries to explore different sound combinations, densities, instruments research, tone limits, mechanical rhythms, etc; in a way very close to his Second String Quartet. The performance we listen here is fluid, technical and beautiful, probably a bit more natural than Ensemble Modern one, that is more sharp and direct, but still my favourite. My rank for this concert nowadays would be: 1. Ensemble Modern / Peter Eoetvoes (Sony). 2. Schoenberg Ensemble / de Leeuw (Teldec). 3. Ensemble InterContemporain / Pierre Boulez (DG).
The Piano Concerto (1988) is a work from Ligeti's final period (now we finally know it's the final one), a part of his catalogue I really don't like so much like the `50s, `60s and `70s one. Influenced by Nancarrow and the piano studies of the American, Ligeti works again with reminiscences of the folk tunes and the popular rhythms, researching poly-rhythms and breaking the lines he was following during many years, reinventing himself in some way, something that received critics from other composers, like Lachenmann's words on this `turning back' of Ligeti. Anyway, this Concert has very interesting moments, even terrifying, like the second movement, which really seems a walk on the night through the Transylvanian paths, with the sound of the wolves around us. The performance by Aimard and the ASKO Ensemble is superb, outstanding; Aimard do it so well like he did with Boulez (DG), and the ensemble playing is marvellous in all the senses. The colours, the instruments, the atmosphere... all is perfect.
Mysteries of the macabre is a work I don't like really very much compared with other works by Ligeti. There's a very good recording on DG, with Boulez, but this one, with the outstanding player Peter Masseurs is really wonderful.
Perfect recordings, really natural, clear and precise, in an outstanding CD you should buy, like the complete series on Sony and Teldec, if you want to know deeply Ligeti. He is lucky of having those two marvellous series, together with some other marvellous CDs by Eoetvoes, Boulez, Atherton, etc.
A Brilliant Recording of Some of Ligeti's Finest Works January 18, 2006
16 out of 17 found this review helpful
The music of Gyoergy Ligeti is enjoying much performance success these days as works by the master are appearing more often on the season repertoires of the major orchestra. This superb recording, the first in the excellent survey series of Ligeti's music, opens the cycle with some of the most accessible and most beautiful of the composer's works.
Beginning with the ethereal 'Melodien' the Schoenberg Ensemble as conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw plays with such transparent clarity that it feels as though the listener is in the midst of the orchestra. The 'Chamber Concerto for 13 Instrumentalists' is aptly titled as Ligeti gives utterly equal importance to each of the 13 players in their solo portions: keyboards include harpsichord, organ, piano and celesta; strings - two violins, double bass, viola and cello; trombone, horn, bass clarinet, clarinet, oboe/English horn/oboe d'amore; flute/piccolo. The four movements evolve naturally and inventively. Seeing this work performed is half the glory, and a recent performance by the LA Philharmonic New Music Group conducted by Alexander Mickelthwate was a revelation.
The Piano Concerto is brilliant as a work and here played with total authority and style by Pierre-Laurent Aimard with the ASKO Orchestra. It would be difficult to imagine a more perfect reading. The 'Mysteries of the Macabre' is an interesting transcription of arias form Ligeti's opera, here performed by trumpeter Peter Masseurs and the ASKO Orchestra. The opera succeeds on every level: the transcriptions, while of great interest, don't maintain the impact of the voice as focal point.
In all, this is a very important CD and one that encourages us to continue with the entire cycle. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, January 06
Current Favorite June 15, 2005
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Even though I've listened to this since it came out, I never tire of it. The Piano Concerto is truly a wonderful work, both "masterpiece" and joke, and why not? Well, maybe not a joke; though, if you listen carefully, you're bound to chuckle at some point. Beethoven, the classical composer Ligeti reminds me most of, had a sense of humor combined with a taste for complexity also.
In fact, I feel as though I am hearing quotations of Beethoven in the cadenza right near the end of the Concerto, but I just can't place them.
The rest of the disc is just as good. These pieces have all been recorded before; even though "Mysteries of the Macabre" is a orchestral premiere, I've got a Roland Pontinen/Hakan Hardenberger version for piano/trumpet I might prefer. But the other performances are the best I've ever heard of these works. Well-recorded too.
A collection of excellent chamber works June 24, 2004
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
"The Ligeti Project" released by Warner Classic seeks to continue Sony's inexplicably halted "Gyorgy Ligeti Edition" collecting the composer's complete works. This first installment brings together four chamber pieces.The opening "Melodien" is an ironic piece. While early Ligeti works, such as "Musica Ricercata" resisted the creative vacuity of Hungary's Stalin-imposed socialist realism, this 1971 piece rebels against the excesses of his own avant-garde fellows. While many contemporary composers where eschewing melody, Ligeti gives us here over 10 minutes of pure melodies, with a beautiful colour which Ligeti has called "iridescent and metalic". The highs get higher and the lows get lower, and the work eventually diffuses into nothingness. I find this performance by the Schoenberg Ensemble slightly unimpressive, preferring the superb 1970's London Sinfonietta performance recently rereleased in DG's Echo 20/21 series. The "Chamber Concerto" was written at the end of the 1960's, and is clearly linked to the bulk of Ligeti's micropolyphonic work of that decade, especially his "Atmospheres". The opening is aggressive, with stewing melodies and a hammering outburst. The third movement is rhythmic like clockwork, and extremely reminiscent of Ligeti's second string quartet. Ultimately the work doesn't hold my interest as much as other pieces from the same time. The "Piano Concerto" of 1988 is probably the high point of the disc. Throughout the 1980's Ligeti was fascinated by new means of rhythmic expression, an outgrowth of his studies of African music and jazz piano. Stylistically this concerto is related to his "Trio for Horn, Violin, and Piano" and first book of Piano Etudes, but it is far more frenetic than both. The playing of Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Ligeti's favourite pianist, is what strikes the listener first. However, repeated listenings have made be very appreciative of the players of the ASKO Ensemlble, especially their trumpet player Peter Masseurs. Finally, "Mysteries of the Macabre" is a light-hearted excerpt from Ligeti's bizzare opera "Le Grande Macabre", set for chamber orchestra. The version here uses a trumpet and piano, though there also exists a thrilling setting for coloratura soprano. At first I thought the trumpet version lackluster, having fond memories of Sybille Ehlert's vocal performance on Gyorgy Ligeti Edition 4: "Vocal Works". The more I listen to the trumpet, though, the more I find I like it, and am beginning to see it as prototypical of Peter Eotvos' recent jazz-like compositions. The performance here can be considered definitive, and is much more captivating than a performance recently rereleased by DG in its Echo 20/21 series. The liner notes are generally excellent, featuring some words from Ligeti himself on the origin of the pieces, and also an enlightening commentary by Aimard on approaching the Piano Concerto, which Aimard calls the composer's masterpiece. This is a great coverage of some of Ligeti's larger chamber works, and is highly recommended. This is perhaps not the ideal place to start, one might try instead The Ligeti Project IV with his famous "Requiem" or Gyorgy Ligeti Edition 1: String Quartets and Duets. However, this is all essential music, and worth getting early in one's acquaintance with Ligeti's music.
 A good mixture of Ligeti works November 21, 2003
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
In this disc, Teldec take up where Sony's Ligeti edition left off, recording a group of four works for chamber orchestra--two with soloists.Melodien is one of the finest of Ligeti's mid-period works. The musical material is--as the title would suggest--a collection of melodies, which are contrapuntally set against each other in a dense weave. Ligeti then starts to clarify the harmonic material until at the midpoint of the work it clears into wide open octaves. Following this, the process is reversed and the music becomes more and more complex again. The performance here is very good, but Atherton's 1970s recording--recently reissued in DG's 20/21 series--is slightly preferable. The Chamber Concerto is one of Ligeti's most popular works. It is in four movements, the first of which burbles up melodies as if from underwater; in contrast, the second, slower movement is more focused on harmony. The third movement is a hilarious sequence of clockwork rhythms and melodies, some of which go horribly wrong, while the finale takes the ideas of the first movement to insane levels of virtuosity. The disc here is in direct competition with Boulez's recording on DG--I prefer Boulez's interpretation which (despite generally faster speeds) gives the work more space to breathe: on the other hand, the sound is greatly superior here and the playing is marginally more accurate. The Piano Concerto seems to be one of Ligeti's most popular pieces. I've never totally agreed with this view--though I know I'm in the minority--finding the odd-numbered, faster movements to be slightly routine, containing similar material to the Etudes without quite the same aural imagination or harmonic interest. I've got no complaints about the second and fourth movements, though--the second is an astonishing, bleak, powerful elegy and the fourth is a remarkable exercise in near-fractal orchestral writing. This is Pierre-Laurent Aimard's second recording of the work--if you already have his DG recording you probably don't need this one, even if it is fractionally cleaner and more lucid. The disc ends with a minor out-take from Ligeti's opera Le Grand Macabre. Mysteries of the Macabre is an arrangement by Elgar Howarth (who premiered the opera and was the first to record it) of the three coloratura arias from it. Peter Masseurs is an excellent trumpet soloist, but this arrangement does not add anything to the original work. A good collection, then, but with good rival recordings available of all of the major works on the disc, it is not an essential buy in the way that later volumes in the series are.
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