Ligeti: Musica Ricercata for piano

Award-winning Malaysian pianist Mei Yi Foo gives the world premiere recording of Unsuk Chin’s extremely virtuosic Piano Études, which take up and develop on the legacy of Ligeti’s. Following the artist’s recommendation, the listener is invited to create their own playlist, and playfully intersperse these among the other “musical toys” on the album, including Ligeti’s Musica Ricercata and Gubaidulina’s Musical Toys.

Although György Ligeti composed only three works for the organ, 'Volumina', 'Harmonies' and 'Coulée', these pieces mark significant stages in the course of his compositional development; more importantly, they revolutionised the world of organ music and provided the initial spark for an entire wave of New Music for the organ. 'Volumina' completely dispenses with the parameters normally used to structure time in a musical work, such as melody, rhythm and harmony.

The only active structural parameter in this music is the tone colour. The music is perceived more in a spatial than a temporal sense, with the title referring to differently dimensioned 'stationary' sound spaces.

In the 11-movement piano cycle 'Musica ricercata' Ligeti explores the possibilities of using the 12 chromatic semitones for composition. One of the movements was arranged for the organ by Ligeti himself; the others have been arranged by the organist Dominik Susteck. Susteck, who performed and recorded these works on the organ of Kunst- Station Sankt Peter in Cologne, also presents an original composition: his organ improvisations 'Sprachsignale' which are inspired by Ligeti’s piece 'Artikulation'. Play loud!

Born in Transylvania in 1923, GyÖrgy Ligeti is undoubtedly one of the greatest contemporary composers, a musician open to most daring construes and a recognised school founder. After leaving Hungary in 1956, Ligeti worked for a long time with Stockhausen; then, from 1970, he turned to a music language that was increasingly melodic. The piano works recorded by the Canadian pianist Lucille Chung in our CD span some 40 years of the composer’s activity, from early works such as the 2 Caprices (1947), to the eleven pieces of the cycle Musica Ricercata (1951/53), to the eight Etudes Vol. 2, written between 1988 and 1993 in an iridescent, new music language.