Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

"Essence of Ligeti" Opening Night at CMS

The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center is presenting a small festival now through January 17th called �The Essence of Ligeti.� Last night�s concert featured the great man�s �Old Hungarian Ballroom Dances,� Chamber Concerto, �Mysteries of the Macabre,� �Hamburg Concerto,� and �Aventures, Nouvelles Aventures� � all in their CMS debuts. The house was packed by a mostly white-haired crowd, and, from the sound of the applause, a good time was had by all, myself included.

Ligeti�s �Ballroom Dances,� from 1949, is actually an arrangement for flute, clarinet, and strings of traditional Hungarian works. In his program notes, Ligeti jokes how he �became famous for writing a piece that was not my own composition,� and, indeed, this bubbly, frothy work helped establish the young composer�s reputation. Things got down to business, however, with the Chamber Concerto. For me, last night was a wonderful reencounter with this exuberant, sophisticated piece I was obsessed with years ago. Reinbert de Leeuw and the CMS musicians rendered the work with vividness and passion, and I heard more lyricism in this performance than in the Ensemble Modern recording I own. There in the music were the inarticulate, suffering masses, the hazy hallucinations of fantasy, the stiff and wild dance of everyday life. Things continued at a similarly high level with �Mysteries of the Macabre.� Featuring a show-stopping, �ber-virtuosic performance by the leather-clad and spot-lit soprano Barbara Hannigan, �Macabre� was on fire from beat one. The music�s jagged syncopated rhythms contrasted nicely with the more liquid Chamber Concerto, and Ligeti�s crazy side, for a furious eight minutes, held center stage.

The second half began with the program�s most recent work, the �Hamburg Concerto,� which was completed in 2002. Scored for solo horn, two basset horns, four natural horns, and chamber orchestra, �Hamburg� proved the most mellow and introspective composition of the evening. The phrasing lacks the energy of the Chamber Concerto, and, overall, the music is flatter and more diffident than most of the Ligeti I�m used to. Yet beauty and novelty are nonetheless everywhere to be found, particularly in the watery �Mixtur� of the fourth movement, and the flutter-tongue �Hymnus� that ends the piece. Ligeti�s inimitably wacky and wonderful �Aventures, Nouvelles Aventures� concluded the program. This silly, maniacal work, featuring three singers who sing on nonsense syllables, teeters on the edge of incomprehension. Over the course of its twenty minutes one realizes that, unlike many composers, Ligeti has the capacity to mock himself, to not take himself seriously: the singers make fun of the instrumental lines, and a pissed-off percussionist rips and breaks things throughout. Standing in the center of this musical circus was De Leeuw � tall, hunched, intellectual � a character himself, a naive but exacting traffic-cop, with his head in the clouds and his left hand insistent on holding the silences as long as they could stretch. The patient audience awarded every final slackening of his arms warmly, and let us hope all these works become mainstays of CMS programming.

posted by David Salvage 1/14/2006