Ligeti's first Todestag

This is one post that I missed writing back when I was living on the wrong side of the Berlin Firewall (which, after some consideration, and discussion with a fellow student who works in the IT field, we have decided is undoubtably administered from somewhere in München (as opposed from, I don't know, Moscow) (he had had some trouble himself with our fickle firewall)) which I at the moment feel like typing a bit about (and glad we are all for that).

But yeah, so Gyorgy Ligeti has been dead for just over a year now. I went to a concert on the day itself (June 12th) of all three books of his piano etudes. A very effective concert, regardless of context, mostly, for me, I suppose, because I had never, in fact, heard said etudes performed live. And in fact, the CD I own of them, is the older, Sony label Ligeti edition of Pierre-Laurent Aimard playing them, and is, I believe, also incomplete, missing the last 2 or 3 etudes of the third book.

They certainly are virtuoisic etudes, very impressive to see them happen. There's something very interesting to me in the fact that Ligeti considered them to be etudes - in the academic sense, of being pieces designed to improve technique, in whatever various (and possibly, abstract) ways. I think most listeners in the hall that night (and it was an interesting venue - a small theatre on the fifth floor of a Hof actually right in my neighborhood (the lighting tech was certainly bored though, as she seemed to insist upon raising the house lights on the perimeter of the seating area by a miniscule amount between every etude to approximately zero effect (well a little bit negative effect)) - a decent piano, theatre acoustics) would argue that they hold up as legitimate concert pieces for solo piano - but still, the dialogue must be there.

And one must admit, that the manaical, ever-rising etudes that close out the second book, are probably the most fun, being as they're manaical, and ever rising.

And well, yeah, that was the concert. I had my fingers crossed that the guy playing them would pull a couple of the tunes from Musica Ricercata out of his ass for an encore, but no such luck. What's the first major death year for a composer? Five? Ten? I mostly just want a sudden surge in the amount of Ligeti being played everywhere, and at least three stagings of Le Grand Macabre, damn it.

And last thing, while I'm still on Ligeti - but pullin' it all together here on the blog - I once read an interview of his where he mentioned that he had read Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach, right before he started working on his Trio for Violin, Horn, and Piano, and that it had explicit influence on his composition. Amazing.