Cellist Christian Poltéra performs on the famous 'Mara' cello, built by Antonio Stradivarius in Cremona in 1711.
Compositional Technique
Ligeti's Cello Concerto is radical because the soloist sparingly contributes to the musical design, creating a mutual dependency between individual and collective.
Compositional Technique
Melodien, an orchestral work by Ligeti, is structured with three superimposed 'planes': foreground melodies, middleground ostinato-like figurations, and background sustained tones.
Composition History
Ligeti's Piano Concerto was influenced by the 51 Studies for Player Piano by American composer Conlon Nancarrow, which helped him make progress on his own concerto.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Ligeti's traumatic wartime experiences led him to an aesthetic where the serious is comical and the comical is terrifying, rooted in his fascination with Lewis Carroll's 'Alice's wonderland'.
Composer Biography
György Ligeti, the composer, moved to the non-Communist West in 1956 after writing his early Concerto Românesc in Communist Hungary.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Ligeti's music often explores a fundamental paradox: traditions must be acknowledged but also superseded.
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