The furious craftsmanship of György Ligeti according to Pierre Bleuse and l’Intercontemporain

For his first recording as the new musical director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Pierre Bleuse strikes a big blow with this vast musical portrait, sometimes concert, sometimes chamber musician, of György Ligeti: a selection established over fifty years of creation.

This two-CD anthology brings to bear, in addition to the masterful artistic handling of the whole by the French conductor, the fabulous talent of numerous soloists from the Parisian phalanx: even better, it establishes new references within a discography yet already rich.

Because beyond the relative disparity of the selected works, the profound unity of the composer’s career is revealed: Magyar sources, driving forces of the five juvenile opuses for piano four hands (1942-50), and subterraneanly irrigating the sonata for solo viola, half a century later, practice of micropolyphony (room concert dating from 1969-70) leading to literally “unheard of” macrostructures, a new conception of the sound body redefining the concert framework (Cello Concerto from 1966), intense work on rhythmic complexity (Concerto pour piano, from 1985, written as an extension of the first book of studies for keyboard) located at the crossroads of cultures (Violin concerto, 1990-92, drawing inspiration from medieval hiccups, sub-Saharan African traditions or…the Fourth Symphony by Shostakovich)

Pierre Bleuse, through an installation refined down to the smallest details, at the head of an Intercontemporain Ensemble in great form and magnificently captured at the Cité de la Musique, exalts through the scores, the almost mechanical precision of the speech (third movement of room concertextreme times of Concerto pour piano), the dazzling poetry of the new sound (first time of Cello Concertogiven here a very “Scelsi” optic), or even the breathtaking aesthetics of the motivic grids (extreme movements of the room concerta you Concerto pour piano). But conductor and musicians transcend all these sophisticated scriptural processes and make this music sumptuous through furious craftsmanship – to evoke René Char – all its expressiveness, sometimes disruptive, sometimes mocking, with this alternation, so characteristic of the composer, between jubilant effervescence (the sonic “rockets” of the intermezzo of the Violin Concerto) and prostrate desolation (the desert harshness of the second period of Concerto pour piano or room concert or the semi-parodic laments of the ocarinas at the whim of the violin concerto).

This production is not to be outdone on the soloist side, in full communion with a very concerned conductor. Hae Sun Kang defends all the ambiguities of Violin Concerto with the eloquence of a true tragi-comedian: she thus places the score between sibylline smiles and tearful nostalgia. The virtuoso features thus seem to come from the romantic solo gesture, through an irrepressible expressiveness and a phenomenal instrumental mastery. His haughty and intense but sometimes sardonic vision in the finale rises to the top of a fairly extensive discography; a rather unique version furthermore embellished with the very beautiful cadenza composed on the occasion of this “centenary tour” by Philippe Manoury, recycling before the final coda, the main motivic milestones of the work in a perfect spirit of continuity and stylistic synthesis.

Renaud Déjardin plays with the terrible technical difficulties of Concerto for cello in total and immersive communion with the dense instrumental fabric which frames it. Difficult to separate from this new recording Dimitri Vassilakis, very clean and involved, from his equally honest predecessors within the EIC.

We can undoubtedly regret that the second disc, after a rather splendid version of commitment and timbre harshness of the room concertwas not completed by the two Ligeti concerti missing (the fluorescent Double for flute, oboe and chamber orchestra and the very unexpected and almost baroque Hamburg concert for horn, four natural bodies and small orchestra, both undoubtedly requiring too specific extensions from the EIC within the framework given to this production).
We therefore completed this double album with a panel of chamber works from various periods, without too much chronological concern. Both Tantrums of 1947 dedicated for piano dedicated to Maria Kurtag have a rather documentary interest, even defended by an ardent Dimitri Vassilakis, joined by Sébastien Vichard for the five pieces for piano four hands – rehabilitated forty years after their composition – certain fragments of which will be recycled in Refined music 0u the Trifles for wind quintet.

Far more substantial are the two final program complements. The viola sonata (19p1-94) is written in the spirit of the baroque partita with its six movements, it “detemperates” in some way the tuning of the instrument, the intervals and the melodic lines (Lunga Time) in the spirit of an imaginary or revisited Hungarian folklore (Squeeze, Lamento). John Stulz gives here a harsher version of sonority, with a more vibrant sound and a very clear attack on the string, with this rediscovered rusticity, less sure of intonation, the work is perhaps closer to the popular sap , Transylvanian folklore or the legacy of the recently deceased master Sandor Veress to whom Ligeti also intended to pay homage.

Another great classic closes this sumptuous double album, the Trio for violin horn and pianotaking up the well-known formula of Brahms’ opus 40 and undoubtedly the most recorded Ligetien opus to date. This version brings together, in addition to the decidedly excellent Sébastien Vichard, already mentioned, on piano, the remarkable Diego Tosi on violin and Jean-Christophe Vervoitte on horn. It is interesting to compare the new engraving with that produced almost forty years ago, by other EIC soloists of the “first generation” (Maryvonne Le Dizès, who has just passed away, Jacques Deleplancque and Pierre-Laurent Aimard – Erato to be reissued). The newcomer gains rhythmic and agogic freedom (very lively, very rhythmic) in flexibility and freedom of tone (the I regret final pathetic). This new version, with a very authentic gesture beyond any instrumental mastery, appears as a free reinterpretation of a return to the darkest, even desperate, romanticism.

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