Ligeti - Metamorphosis: String Quartets
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Label: Pentatone
Cat No: PTC5187061
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 1
Genre: Chamber
Release Date: 3rd March 2023
Contents
Artists
Quatuor DiotimaWorks
Andante and AllegrettoString Quartet no.1 'Metamorphoses nocturnes'
String Quartet no.2
Artists
Quatuor DiotimaAbout
Quatuor Diotima makes its Pentatone debut with a recording of Györgi Ligeti’s string quartets. While the second quartet from 1968 is an avant-garde classic, the first from 1953-54, “Metamorphoses nocturnes”, is often nicknamed Bartók’s seventh quartet, pointing out the continuity between these two Hungarian master composers. Despite moments of nostalgia, it already possesses the ferocious, adventurous nature of the later quartet. In-between these two iconoclast works, the Andante and Allegretto from 1950 offers an intimate moment of repose. The members of Diotima long postponed recording Ligeti’s string quartets, intimidated by their significance in music history and the demands they place on the players, but now the time has come to pursue this fascinating project and share it with the world. The quartet is fascinated by the cinematic qualities of Ligeti’s music and its use in films, including Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The album cover pays homage to that iconic movie.
Quatuor Diotima is one the most in-demand chamber ensembles in the world today, and has worked in close collaboration with several of the greatest composers of the late twentieth century. Reflected in the mirror of today’s music, the quartet projects a new light onto the masterpieces of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Quatuor Diotima is one the most in-demand chamber ensembles in the world today, and has worked in close collaboration with several of the greatest composers of the late twentieth century. Reflected in the mirror of today’s music, the quartet projects a new light onto the masterpieces of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Sound/Video
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1String Quartet No.1 ‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’ (1953–54): 1. Allegro grazioso
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2String Quartet No.1 ‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’ (1953–54): 2. Vivace, capriccioso
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3String Quartet No.1 ‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’ (1953–54): 3. Adagio, mesto
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4String Quartet No.1 ‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’ (1953–54): 4. Presto
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5String Quartet No.1 ‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’ (1953–54): 5. Prestissimo
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6String Quartet No.1 ‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’ (1953–54): 6. Andante tranquillo
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7String Quartet No.1 ‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’ (1953–54): 7. Tempo di Valse, moderato, con eleganza, un poco capriccioso
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8String Quartet No.1 ‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’ (1953–54): 8. Subito prestissimo
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9String Quartet No.1 ‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’ (1953–54): 9. Allegretto, un poco gioviale
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10String Quartet No.1 ‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’ (1953–54): 10. Poco più mosso
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11String Quartet No.1 ‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’ (1953–54): 11. Prestissimo
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12String Quartet No.1 ‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’ (1953–54): 12. Ad libitum, senza misura
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13Andante and Allegretto for String Quartet (1950): 1. Andante cantabile
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14Andante and Allegretto for String Quartet (1950): 2. Allegretto poco capriccioso
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15String Quartet No.2 (1968): 1. Allegro nervoso
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16String Quartet No.2 (1968): 2. Sostenuto, molto calmo
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17String Quartet No.2 (1968): 3. Come un meccanismo di precisione
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18String Quartet No.2 (1968): 4. Presto furioso, brutale, tumultuoso
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19String Quartet No.2 (1968): 5. Allegro con delicatezza
Europadisc Review
From 1956, when he emigrated from his native Hungary, until his death in June 2006, György Ligeti proved himself one of modern music’s great individualists. Fascinated by music’s processes, as well by its sounds, he created an output rich in contrasts, fastidiously written, absorbing folk influences, avant-garde ideas and techniques, as well as non-western procedures and timbres. The extreme concentration of much of his output (among his many influences was the music of Webern) has done nothing to dim its appeal, far beyond the conventional borders of ‘classical music’. Most famously, several of his larger-scale orchestral and choral works were used on the soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. On the cover of their absorbing new album of Ligeti’s works for string quartet, the members of Quatuor Diotima pay tribute to that movie.
Ligeti’s string quartets may not be as well-known as some of his larger works (Atmosphères, Lux aeterna and the seminal 1977 opera Le Grand Macabre among them), but – like many of his other pieces concerned with small forms – they are every bit as important. In their introductory notes to ‘Metamorphosis Ligeti’, Quatuor Diotima describe the Second Quartet (1968) as ‘one of the foundational masterpieces of the aesthetics of the 20th century’: a bold claim, but one fully borne out by their marvellously focussed, detailed and committed playing. 28 May 2023 marks the centenary of Ligeti’s birth, and this new disc from Pentatone is a timely reminder of the composer’s unique contribution to modern music.
It opens with the multi-section String Quartet no.1, subtitled ‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’ (1953-4). This is one of many works composed ‘for the bottom drawer’, at a time when the Communist authorities in Hungary strictly policed all forms of radical or innovative artistic expression. Cast in 12 sections, it’s a captivating series of metamorphoses – variations would be too prescriptive a word – on a tight four-note chromatic motif. Unlike classical or romantic variation sets, it proceeds more by contrast and confrontation than by steady gradation, but it shows a magisterial command of the timbral and expressive possibilities offered by four stringed instruments, deftly scored so that – as with all great music – medium and content feel inseparable.
Kitsch waltz music rubs shoulders with earthy folk-music references, timbral contrasts are maximised, and stark juxtaposition is prioritised over smooth transition (as with the ‘So there!’ cadential chords between sections 4 and 5). The ‘nocturnal’ element (a cypher for the personal at a time when all forms of individualism were frowned upon) is most obvious in the dreamlike haze of the final section, with a bariolage of eerie harmonics creating a haunting carpet of sound before the desolate coda. The Diotima’s account of this multi-section masterpiece is astonishing in its immediacy, with a seemingly effortless command of the music’s sudden, almost cinematic juxtapositions, and a focussed sound captured to stunning effect in the renowned acoustics of the Arsenal at Metz.
Ligeti’s Second Quartet dates from 1968, and shows the distance Ligeti had already travelled since his move to the west in 1956. Its five movements may on the page seem more expansive than those of the First, yet they are just as concentrated on essentials, and just as steeped in juxtaposition and contrast. Here, Ligeti fully inhabits the world of the avant garde with which he had quickly become acquainted, yet without falling prey to its own set of orthodoxies. The nervous edginess of the opening movement, the hollow calm of the second movement (which seems to grow out of its opening sonorities), and the pizzicato, out-of-sync clockwork mechanisms of the third are all evidence of Ligeti’s restless, enquiring mind, and are brilliantly realised by the players here, each bow-stroke or plucked note carefully weighted to create a mesmerising soundscape.
The Presto furioso fourth movement (marked ‘brutale, tumultuoso’) is a tour de force, a gripping performance that goes from alarming fortissimo to pianissimos of whispered delicacy. The flowing, almost aquatic textures of the concluding Allegro con delicatezza, the ghostly tremolos and sudden bursts of activity contrasted with melancholy inwardness are even more impressive, the players alert to the music’s mercurial changes while never losing grasp of the overall form and pulse. As with the First Quartet, this is at once one of the boldest and most persuasive performances of this remarkable music ever committed to disc, the stature of the music but also its kaleidoscopically multi-faceted nature blazingly evident.
In between the two quartets comes the Andante and Allegretto for string quartet of 1950. A youthful work, it pays tribute to the formative influences of Farkas and Kodály, and is a more straightforward example of the slow-fast contrast built into Hungarian folk music (and familiar from the works of Bartók). Yet even here Ligeti’s ability to enliven an essentially post-Romantic, early-modernist soundworld with careful deployment of long-short, short-long rhythms and highly effective string writing creates something that, however un-Ligetian it may at first sound, is nevertheless a compelling work on its own terms. The Quatuor Diotima were quite right to include it: this compact yet complete survey of the composer’s string quartet output, as gloriously recorded as it is played, makes the most handsome centenary tribute imaginable.
Reviews
They [String Quartets 1 & 2] make enormous technical and musical demands, and the performances by the Quatuor Diotima meet their challenges with more accuracy and brilliance than any I’ve heard before. Every detail of the string writing, all informed by Ligeti’s phenomenal aural imagination, is crystal clear, the shape of each movement utterly lucid. Andrew ClementsThe Guardian 16 March 2023
Dating from 1953-54, the String Quartet No.1 (‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’) is the first work in which Ligeti’s own voice is truly heard... Opening with a quiet gathering up of sound, it is a work in which rapturous musing contrasts with virtuosic outbursts and fierce folksiness; these contrasts, not to say ruptures, are handled briiliantly by the Diotimas. ... These players, who have specialised in modern music since forming their ensemble at the Paris Conservatoire 27 years ago, are formidable throughout. John Allison (Chamber Choice)BBC Music Magazine April 2023
The Quatuor Diotima meet the challenges [of these works] with more accuracy and brilliance than any I’ve heard before. Every detail of the string writing, all informed by Ligeti’s phenomenal aural imagination, is crystal clear, the shape of each movement utterly lucid. Guardian top 10 classical recordings of 2023The Guardian 21 December 2023
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