The Southbank Centre’s Ligeti 100 day formed an extensive centenary tribute, nine hours long, that surveyed the Hungarian composer’s life, music and legacy with a series of concerts, discussions and lectures. It began with a lunchtime recital by Pierre-Laurent Aimard, György Ligeti’s interpreter of choice for his own piano music, and closed with a Sinfonietta concert conducted by Vimbayi Kaziboni, for which Aimard returned to play the Piano Concerto. In between came an informal sequence of events in the QEH foyer, among them a talk by Ligeti’s biographer Richard Steinitz, and a fascinating interview in which Aimard spoke with conductor Jonathan Berman about working with Ligeti and playing his music.
There were also performances in the foyer. The space proved less than ideal for Ramifications, a study in microtonal harmony for two groups of instrumentalists tuned a quarter tone apart: students from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance joined a handful of Sinfonietta players and conductor Timothy Lines, but far too much detail was swallowed by the deadening acoustic. Later came the notorious polyrhythmic game of Poème Symphonique for 100 metronomes, an audience participation exercise this time - people could apply to set a few metronomes in motion themselves when they bought their tickets. It was great fun, though one rogue metronome maddeningly tick-tocked away for 20 minutes after the rest had stopped.
The two main concerts were superb. Aimard’s programme flanked Musica Ricercata, from 1952, with the Chromatische Phantasie of 1956 and a selection from the later Études. The Webernian Phantasie doesn’t really work as a piece: Ligeti was reportedly unhappy with it himself. Used by Stanley Kubrick in Eyes Wide Shut, however, Musica Ricercata, with its sound-world gradually expanding from austerity to complexity, is an astonishing thing, while the Études contain some of the most extraordinary piano music of the late 20th century. Aimard’s probing way with this repertory, richly coloured and profound in its understanding, remains unique.
The later concert contrasted the profusion of the Piano Concerto with the tauter rigours of its cello equivalent, the latter played with subtle restraint and great finesse by the Sinfonietta’s principal cellist Tim Gill. There were shorter works by Ligeti, including the brief, exquisite Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet, along with music by Conlon Nancarrow, who influenced him (the mathematical Piece No 2 for Small Orchestra, elegantly conducted by Kaziboni) and his former pupil Unsuk Chin (her Advice from a Caterpillar from the opera Alice in Wonderland, a witty yet sinister bass clarinet solo, deftly done by Mark van de Wiel). The Piano Concerto, meanwhile, formed the tour de force finale, with the Sinfonietta playing with great dexterity, and Aimard and Kaziboni marvellously alert to its intricacies, beauties and tensions.
