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| Gyoergy Ligeti Edition 1: String Quartets and Duets - Arditti String Quartet | 
 enlarge | Artists: Gyorgy Ligeti, David Alberman, Irvine Arditti, Garth Knox, Rohan Desaram, Arditti String Quartet
Label: Sony
Category: Music
List Price: $11.98
Buy New: $6.99
You Save: $4.99 (42%)
Buy New/Used from $6.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  (16 reviews)
Sales Rank: 16349
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
MPN: 62306
UPC: 074646230626
EAN: 0074646230626
ASIN: B0000029OY
Release Date: January 21, 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Tracks:
| • | String Quartet No. 1 'Metamorphoses Nocturnes': Allegro Grazioso | | • | String Quartet No. 1 'Metamorphoses Nocturnes': Vivace, Capriccioso | | • | String Quartet No. 1 'Metamorphoses Nocturnes': Adagio, Mesto | | • | String Quartet No. 1 'Metamorphoses Nocturnes': Presto | | • | String Quartet No. 1 'Metamorphoses Nocturnes': Andante Tranquillo | | • | String Quartet No. 1 'Metamorphoses Nocturnes': Tempo Di Valse, Moderato, Con Eleganza, Un Poco Capriccioso | | • | String Quartet No. 1 'Metamorphoses Nocturnes': Allegretto, Un Poco Gioviale | | • | String Quartet No. 1 'Metamorphoses Nocturnes': Prestissimo | | • | String Quartet No. 2: Allegro Nervoso | | • | String Quartet No. 2: Sostenuto, Molto Calmo | | • | String Quartet No. 2: Come Un Meccanismo Di Precisione | | • | String Quartet No. 2: Presto Furioso, Brutale, Tumultuoso | | • | String Quartet No. 2: Allegro Con Delicatezza | | • | Hommage A Hilding Rosenberg | | • | Balada Si Joc: Balada Andante | | • | Balada Si Joc: Allegro Vivace | | • | Andante And Allegretto: Andante Cantabile | | • | Andante And Allegretto: Allegretto Poco Capriccioso |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com essential recording
This is a fine collection of moving, muscular performances by this seminal postwar composer. Surely the best known of the works on this disc is the Second String Quartet, one of the masterpieces of 20th-century music--although you might not know it's a masterpiece until the heartbreaking last movement. But the First String Quartet, written before Ligeti emigrated from Hungary to the West, is fascinating: it shows Ligeti working through the influence of Bartok, particularly Bartok's Third and Fourth Quartets--music Ligeti knew only silently, from the score, since performances of Bartok's music were banned by the Hungarian communist regime. This excellent recording provides a complete overview of Ligeti's compositional career through the medium of string chamber music, from homages to Bartok to the achievement of Ligeti's own groundbreaking style. --Joshua Cody
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| Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
Very Intense Performances! November 30, 2007
Arditti Qt gives the most intensely felt performances of Ligeti's very original chamber music masterpieces, String Quartet 1 & 2, accentuating the contrast between agressive passages and eerie quiet sections. Rest of the tracks includes some gems and premiere recordings. LaSalle Qt on DG also gives excellent reading of String Quartet No.2, worth checking out!
Important, but not as interesting as the vocal works. August 29, 2006
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Sony's "Gyorgy Ligeti Edition 1: String Quartets and Duos" is the first in this series of, I believe, complete works by Ligeti, but it is always the third or fourth disk I go to whenever I get around to listening to Ligeti once again, about once every year.
To me, the average amateur 'classical music' consumer, it is interesting, imaginative, and certainly 'new' when compared to 19th and early 20th century music, but it just doesn't seem to have the same cachet as the vocal works. While I would sooner listen to Ligeti's vocal works than most other modern music, I actually prefer Bartok, Berg, and Schoenberg for their instrumental works.
I agree with the top reviewer that the String Quartet No. 2 is the hit of the disk, but it doesn't blow me away in the same way that 'Lux Aeterna' does. That may be just the '2001' factor at work, but there you have it.
Still excellent and still evocative of other modernists, not the least of whom is Frank Zappa.
 Not really my style... August 23, 2006
1 out of 16 found this review helpful
This is a little too avant garde for me. I like my classical music to be just that: classical.
I bought the CD but I am returning it. Ligeti is very talented but his music (to me) is only tolerable in short bursts. I couldn't see myself listening to the whole CD time and again.
String works, includes his must-have glorious Second Quartet December 7, 2004
21 out of 21 found this review helpful
Sony's "Gyorgy Ligeti Edition 1: String Quartets and Duos" is the first disc of the 13-volume series--continued after the 8th installment by Teldec's "The Ligeti Project"---of Gyorgy Ligeti's collected works in performances overseen by the composer itself. It collects his impressive two strings quartets, a brief birthday greeting to another composer, a work inspired by an ethnomusical stint in Romania, and another early work. The works are performed by the Arditti Quartet, who have done so much to provide satisfying and lasting performances of modern string repetoire.
String Quartet No. 1 ("Metamorphoses nocturnes") was written between 1953 and 1954, as the composer was struggling to express himself creatively in Stalinist Hungary. The work shows clear inspiration from Bartok's third and fourth quartets, which Ligeti knew only from their score as they had been suppressed. Similarly, Ligeti had no hope his own work would be performed, and it was written essentially "for his desk drawer". Ironically, when Ligeti submitted the piece to a Western competition, it was deemed too traditional for recognition. This first string quartet is a study in the juxtaposition of unlike sections; under a thin verneer of normality, the music is heterogenous. I think this is a fine work, and it is one of the composer's few pre-emigration pieces that do not sound like juvenalia in comparison with his later works.
String Quartet No. 2 (1968) was composed long after Ligeti's move to the West and so is entirely avant-garde, linked with the techniques of his other works of the 1960's. Ligeti was quite proud of this piece, claiming it as his favourite of his works of the time, and feeling that he had made a permanent contribution to the string quartet tradition. The work is indeed a part of his micropolyphonic style of the 1960's, but there is a great deal more here. It is a twitching, paranoid, nervous, neurotic piece with a grimy, constantly shifting texture, like the soundtrack to a Kafka story. It really must be heard to be believed, and this second quartet is the high point of this disc.
"Hommage a Hilding Rosenburg" for violin and cello (1982) is a short birthday greeting to that Swedish composer. It is the least important work on the disc and is really nothing more than something of a fanfare.
"Balada si joc" for two violins (Romanian "Ballad and dance", 1950) is a short string duet inspired by Ligeti's time spent in Romania collecting folk music during his music studies. The result uses no actual folk material, but is an authentic imitation of the music Ligeti encountered both in his boyhood and in his return to Transylvania at this later time. When it was later expanded to use an orchestra, it became the first two movements of his "Concert Romanesc" (found on "The Ligeti Project II"). The string duet, however, manages to create with but two instruments nearly the same moving passion as the later orchestration. The following "Andante and Allegretto" for string quartet (1950) is another early work, again inspired by folk music. It is not as successful as "Balada si joc", indeed even forgettable.
While there are other recordings of these works available, such as the recent recordings reissued in Deutsche Grammaphon's "Echo 20/21" series, this performance by the Arditti Quartet can certainly be seen as definitive. It takes a lot of talent to please Ligeti, one of the most demanding composers, especially in a crushingly difficult work like the second string quartet.
While I think "Gyorgy Ligeti Edition 3: Piano Works" or "The Ligeti Project IV" are better places to begin on this series of Ligeti's collected works, this set of string works should be one of the first Ligeti works you buy, especially for the String Quartet No. 2.
Great Recordings of Modern String Quartets August 7, 2004
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
For those of you who haven't experienced Ligeti, this is the CD to purchase, especially if you like string quartets. If you're not accustomed to 20th century music, keep an opened mind and I promise you'll really enjoy his music.
The recording of the 2nd quartet is, as usual with the Arditti Quartet, phenomenal, but what makes this recording is their production of his 1st quartet. The performance is very clean and precise, yet still very musical. Most impressive of all, Arditti stays true to Ligeti's tempi, including the blistering tempo of the end!
As an added bonus, there are two very delightful duets for violins, which are very tonal and based on Hungarian folk tunes (these were written as part of graduation from the Budapest Academy of Music).
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