Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #119487 in Digital Music Album
• Released on: 1997-05-20
• Running time: 4506 seconds

Customer Reviews

share Ligeti's fascination with mechanical things.
First off, I should inform you that Sony's Ligeti Edition series is being deleted so if you're interested in this stuff, you should pick up the ones you want as soon as you can. Ligeti Edition 5 is a good one. No, it's AWESOME. If you have any interest in "mechanical music," this should be essential.

Poeme Symphonique for 100 Metronomes was the main thing I wanted to hear on this collection. The piece starts with 100 metronomes ticking in a dense, ordered mass of monotone ticks. As the piece progresses, as some of the metronomes finish winding down, distinct rhythmic arrangements begin to emerge, swaying and wavy and disorienting. (You can also play a good trick on someone: play this piece in their car and they'll think the vehicle is about to explode or something.) Finally, one metronome is left ticking alone, then silence. The concept seemed utterly fascinating so I knew it was something I had to check out. Fortunately, it is more than just an idea that sounds good on paper - it is a very enthralling piece of music. In the liner notes, Ligeti discusses the thermodynamic category of maximal entropy, which factored into his considerations in composing this piece. That's interesting, because in his work on "dissipative structures," Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine theorized that a given system might reach a "bifurcation point," at which its simpler processes can no longer provide for order. At this point, Prigogine tells us, the system can either go into a total, entropic collapse, or evolve into a higher form of order. The second law of thermodynamics (on which our understanding of entropy is based) may not be as relevant as Prigogine's insights. Rather than coming to maximal entropy upon the finale of the single metronome, we can think of it as a new beginning. It's kind of inspirational in its own weird little way. To get the most out of it, play it on your finest stereo equipment at massive volumes and drown in the sound (gotta emulate the live performance anyway you can).

Another highlight of this collection as Ligeti's piano Etudes adapted for player piano. In standard form, the Etudes demand reams of virtuosity. Here, they are rearranged for player piano where there are no limits imposed by the performer - even the godlike Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Fredrik Ullen are still MEN, and thus have man's limitations. Needless to say, these adaptations are stunning and astonishingly fast, from the head-spinning runs of L'escalier du diable to the astonishing gamelan texture of Galamb borong (for two player pianos). Also of interest is Continuum, adapted for two player pianos. It takes the blurry prestissimo to unreal speeds (it cannot actually be played fast enough on standard piano - the original was written for harpsichord).

The barrel organ pieces are very amusing adaptations of early Ligeti with shadows of Bartok, and they are full of the original pieces' rhythmic ingenuity and vigor, but with flawless mechanical precision and tone control. I think a big reason for my enjoying them is their quirky sound. As for Musica ricercata, personally I'd rather listen to Aimard's piano version (on Ligeti Edition 3), but the barrel organ adaptation is a pretty interesting spin on the piece, with an arrangement that gives it a very different flavor. The barrel organ also makes them sound kinda proggy, hehe.

Get it. Remember, this stuff's going out of print, and Ligeti is so good you don't want to miss your opportunity to have his music!

Don't believe the gripe
It's unfortunate that the previous reviewer has sadly misjudged this marvelous collection, which is a rich and complex selection of mechanized pieces for player piano and barrel organ that truly shows Ligeti's creativity in all its glory--sometimes berserk, sometimes poignant, but always compelling. Or almost always. It's true that the metronome piece is tiresome, but remember: it's only one piece! To dismiss an entire record of some of the 20th century's most interesting and inventive music on the basis of a single wearisome experiment is absurd. In fact, I resisted purchasing this record for many months because I feared it would be as troublesome as some of Nancarrow's thornier compositions for player piano. But in actuality, this music is much more enjoyable--though not "easy" necessarily--than Ligeti's critics would have you believe. For those fans of Volume 3 in this set, the Piano Etudes, this selection is oddly comparable in its striking aural effect and surprising drama, albeit different in structure and in instrumentation. So don't worry about the metronome and instead take a chance on the composer's wondrous mechanical mastery. For most fans of modern music, it shouldn't be a difficult leap.

Better than it had any right to be
I stalled for a long time on buying this disc because the general premise didn't seem attractive. 40 minutes of arrangements for barrel organ (mainly of early Ligeti), 15 of arrangements for player piano and a 20-minute piece for 100 metronomes just didn't seem much like fun. In part I was right, but there are also some surprising successes in store for the listener.

Continuum and Hungarian Rock are both harpsichord pieces: one a frenetic pattern-illusion toccata, the other a piece of faux-naif postmodern pastiche. Both come off very well in barrel organ transcription--it's so much easier to hear details that tend to get lost in live performance. Three early piano pieces follow in barrel organ transcriptions: the Capriccio #1 and Invention are not greatly interesting, but Pierre Charial's barrel organ version of the second Capriccio finds depths--and premonitions of later Ligeti--in it that have so far been missed by live interpreters.

The Poeme Symphonique might well be Ligeti's most controversial piece, and it's a comparatively rare venture into Dadaism. Essentially, all the performance involves is queuing up 100 metronomes at different speeds and waiting for them to run down. It's actually more musically interesting than one would expect--patterns emerge from a blur before the rhythms become more and more regular at the end--but it's unlikely to be a piece the listener is likely to return to. (In truth, it works much better live, treated as an installation.)

The barrel organ transcription of Musica ricercata for piano doesn't add very much to the original. One or two pieces--particularly the seventh--do benefit from having new light drawn on them, but in general I'd rather hear a pianist play it (particularly Aimard in his excellent performances on volume 3 of this edition).

The disc ends with player piano transcriptions. Der Zauberlehring, Vertige, En suspens and L'escalier du diable all appear much faster here than on recordings with human pianists. L'escalier, in particular, gives a tremendous sheer visceral thrill, though I miss the expressiveness of a live pianist. Coloana fara sfarasit is actually intended for a player piano, as Ligeti found it was too hard for a real pianist to play. It's a splendidly exhilarating ride, and I hope one day a super-virtuoso will be found who can play it on the piano. The two transcriptions for two antiphonally divided player pianos are not so interesting: Galamb borong gains little from the arrangement, while the version of Continuum that closes the disc isn't nearly as fun as the one that opens it.

I enjoyed this disc, though it's not one I return to very often. If you like the concept, I would recommend this recording--though buy it sooner rather than later as Sony's website no longer lists this disc as in print.