Ligeti composed a series of 18 études for solo piano between 1985 and 2001, published in three books. When they first became known, these pieces were hailed as instant classics of the twentieth-century piano repertoire, and also provided a remarkable climax to Ligeti’s composing career. Following in the tradition of Chopin, Liszt and Debussy, these pieces pose tremendous technical challenges while also resulting in brilliant musical miniatures, whether dazzling or poetic. Ligeti himself wrote that he imagined in the Études ‘highly emotive music of high contrapuntal and metrical complexity, with labyrinthine branches and perceptible melodic forms … not tonal, but not atonal either.’  

They are dedicated to various important exponents of contemporary music, ranging from the composers Pierre Boulez and György Kurtág, to the pianists Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Volker Banfield. Described by critic Andrew Clements as ‘the most important additions to the solo-piano repertoire in the last half-century’, one remarkable feature is the way in which, as Clements put is, ‘in the Études, Ligeti effectively created a new pianistic vocabulary’. The influences described by Ligeti on these works included medieval and Renaissance music, African polyphony, Latin-American dances, Balinese gamelan, jazz pianists including Bill Evans and Thelonius Monk and the folk music of Ligeti’s native Hungary. But all of these are subsumed into a language that is entirely Ligeti’s own, with the most exhilarating results. 

© Nigel Simeone 

Allegro con spirito 
Rubato, lamentoso 
Cantabile, molto legato 
Vivace. Energico 
Adagio. Mesto – Allegro maestoso (Béla Bartók in Memoriam) 
Vivace. Capriccioso 
 

During the war, most of Ligeti’s immediate family perished in Nazi concentration camps, but he was able study at the Budapest Conservatoire, where his teachers included Zoltán Kodály. In 1951–3 Ligeti wrote a set of piano pieces called Musica ricercata from which he selected six to arrange for woodwind quintet. The influence of Bartók, especially of piano pieces like Mikrokosmos, is apparent throughout – and the fifth movement is explicitly written as a tribute to the composer whose music most inspired the young Ligeti when he was growing up in a repressive regime. The other composer whose music comes strongly to mind in the fourth and sixth of the Bagatelles is Stravinsky. Ligeti’s style was to change rapidly within a few years, after he moved to the more liberal cultural climate of Vienna. But the Bagatelles give an enjoyable indication of how skilful a composer he was at the start of his career.  

Nigel Simeone © 2014 

Allegro con spirito
Rubato, lamentoso
Cantabile, molto legato
Vivace. Energico
Adagio. Mesto – Allegro maestoso (Béla Bartók in Memoriam)
Vivace. Capriccioso
Among musicians, at least, György Ligeti is probably the second most famous native of Transylvania (after Vlad the Impaler, the inspiration for Dracula). During the war, most of Ligeti’s immediate family perished in Nazi concentration camps, but he was able study at the Budapest Conservatoire, where his teachers included Zoltán Kodály. In 1951–3 Ligeti wrote a set of piano pieces called Musica ricercata from which he selected six to arrange for woodwind quintet. The influence of Bartók, especially of pieces like Mikrokosmos, is apparent throughout – and the fifth movement is explicitly written as a tribute to the composer whose music most inspired the young Ligeti when he growing up in a repressive regime. The other composer whose music comes strongly to mind in the fourth and sixth of the Bagatelles is Stravinsky. Ligeti’s style was to change rapidly within a few years, after he moved to the more liberal cultural climate of Vienna. But the Bagatelles give an enjoyable indication of how skilful a composer he was at the start of his career.

Nigel Simeone © 2014

Ligeti composed his Ten Pieces between August and December 1968. He said that his first idea was ‘to compose a virtuoso work … to bring out the individual character of the five very different instruments available to me. My first idea was to write five short virtuoso pieces, but as I was working on the sketches, I began to sense that this didn’t work in formal terms … It made more sense to have ensemble pieces contrast with virtuoso pieces, in order to supply points of repose. It was thus that the final form came about: ten pieces with a regular alternation of ensemble pieces and virtuoso pieces.’ 

The first performance was given on 20 January 1969 in Malmö, Sweden, played by the Wind Quintet of the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. Each piece is short – the first, marked Molto sostenuto e calmo is one of the longer movements, lasting just over two minutes, while the fourth, fifth and sixth, all very fast, last less than a minute each. In his biography of Ligeti, British composer Richard Steinitz has described the Ten Pieces as ‘both accessible and delightfully characteristic of their composer … The style is intentionally kaleidoscopic’ (likened by Ligeti himself to Tom and Jerry cartoons), and ‘the music is quirky, epigrammatic and comic.’ 

© Nigel Simeone 

Au Bord d’une Source (“Beside a Spring”) is the 4th piece of the first suite of Années de Pèlerinage (“Years of Pilgrimage”) which was composed between 1835 and 1838 and published in 1842.

The music begins with a gentle, flowing melody that represents the babbling of a spring. Liszt uses arpeggios and delicate trills to create a sense of water cascading over rocks. As the piece progresses, the melody becomes more complex and the harmonies richer, perhaps reflecting the increasing depth of the spring as it flows. He uses dynamic contrast to convey the ebb and flow of the water, as well as sudden bursts of energy that suggest the rush of water over rapids.

In 1862–3, Liszt composed two Legends which he dedicated to his daughter, Cosima von Bülow (later Cosima Wagner). The first legend is a brilliantly evocative musical depiction of St Francis of Assisi praying to the birds. Liszt’s inspiration came not only from religious texts but also from the birds he observed on Monte Mario near Rome, while he was on a retreat – an occasion when he was visited by Pope Pius IX who may have been given a private performance of the piece. Liszt first played it in public at a concert in Budapest on 29 August 1865.

© Nigel Simeone

Liszt composed the Mephisto Waltz No.1 in about 1859, at the same time as a version for orchestra. It was dedicated to Carl Tausig, the Polish virtuoso who was considered Liszt’s most gifted pupil, still in his teens at the time. As well as being a dazzling concert waltz that calls on all a pianist’s technical resources, it is also a programmatic work derived from the 1836 Faust by Nikolaus Lenau (indebted to Goethe, and to Byron). Liszt quotes part of Lenau’s preface in the score to explain the story, which is closely mirrored by the music: A wedding feast is in progress with music and dancing. After encouraging Faust to join the festivities, Mephistopheles snatches a violin and draws seductive sounds from it. Faust whirls about with a beautiful woman in a wild dance, out of the hall and into the woods as a nightingale warbles its song.

© Nigel Simeone

Allegro molto
Andantino
Allegro giocoso
Andante
Allegro molto

In 1954, Witold Lutosławski wrote his five Dance Preludes for clarinet and piano, based on folk tunes from Northern Poland, describing them as his ‘farewell to folk music’. In 1959 he recast the pieces for the Czech Nonet – comprising wind quintet, violin, viola, cello and double bass – in which he makes one significant change: no longer is the clarinet the soloist, but the thematic material is shared between the whole ensemble. Lutosławski’s biographer Charles Bodman Rae has described the way the composer transforms the folk tunes, and generates the propulsive energy in the faster movements: ‘Superimposition of different metres is the main feature of these pieces, resulting in metrical and rhythmic contradictions. This technique is most noticeable in the first, third and fifth pieces and invests them with much of their rhythmic vitality.’

This Nonet version of the Dance Preludes was first performed by the Czech Nonet at a concert in Louny, 40 miles northwest of Prague, on 10 November 1959.

Nigel Simeone 2013