Gyorgy Ligeti / Bernd Alois Zimmermann - Music for two Pianos (1980)

Gyorgy Ligeti was born 89 years ago today, in 1923. He lived to the age of 83, passing away in 2006.

Notes excerpted from the (enclosed) insert:
 
Monument, Selbstportrait, Bewegung- Ligeti's first piano composition since his emigration in 1956, was commissioned by the West German Radio; it was written during February, March, and April 1976, and received its world premiere at Cologne on the 15th of May 1976.

Monument - music which with its unvarying character and momentum seems to mark time on the spot - or, as the title suggests, on its pedestal. Regularly recurring intervals, only occasionally increased or reduced, are associated with particular gradings of volume level. While the pitch layers gradually extend upward and downward from the middle register, the fortissimo blocks of sound at the beginning evolve into an ever more complex texture of different dynamic levels which exist simultaneously, drawing the ear from the forte in the foreground by way of mezzo-forte, mezzo-piano and piano levels to the depths of pianissimo.
"If the dynamic differentiation is realized accurately, the music produces the effect of being three-dimensional, like a hologram standing in an imaginary space. This illusion of space gives the music a statuesque, immobile character (=Monument)."

Selbstportrait - "Self Portrait with Reich and Riley (and with Chopin in the Background)" is in the tradition of the pieces of Ligeti which by means of the polyrhythmic superimposing of extremely intricate kinds of figuration conjure up musical puzzles of outrageous absurdity )Poeme Symphonique for 100 metronomes, 1962, Les Horloges Demoniaques from Nouvelle Aventures,  1965,  Continuum for harpsichord and the 2nd String Quartet, 1968. Similar methods, although within entirely different formal concepts, were also developed during the sixties in the music of the American "minimalists"  La Monte Young, Terry Riley and Steve Reich. Ligeti's musical group picture - drawn sharply and with a hint of caricature - clearly  reveals both relationships and differences. "As hommage to Riley and Reich (while personal affection certainly also played a part) I gave it a touch of irony (and no less self-irony, as I also depicted myself), combining the techniques of Riley's pattern repetition and Reich's phase shifting with my own techniques of superimposed grids and supersaturated canons"(...)

Even more pianistic in effect is "In a gently flowing movement", a hair-raisingly difficult study in velocity demanding the utmost virtuosity, in which characteristics of traditional piano music (Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Debussy) glimmer like recollected images. This third third movement is, at the same time, a pendant to the first, a "liquified" variant of the static "Monument", and its chorale-like closing section - an eight-voice mirror canon "which constantly draws closer together like a telescope" sums up the concluding character of all three pieces in a joint epilogue.

Perspektiven, Monologue- Key works Of Zimmermann's oeuvre during the fifties and sixties. The Perspektiven, which form what is probably his forst strictly structural piece, reflect his coming to grips with late Webern, with the technique of serial composition, it is no mere chance that the second part of this work contains, like a deeply respectful evocation, an allusion to Webern's Concerto Op.24.
It is typical of Zimmermann that from strict construction he was able to create music of a sensuous character, marked by richness of tone colours, espressivo, apparently improvisatory freedom and pianistic brilliance. Perspektiven I was completed in April 1955 and Perspektiven II about a year later.

Zimmermann produced Monologe-a solo version of the Dialoge for two pianos and full orchestra- at the beginning of 1964 during his second year of study at the Villa Massimo in Rome. With the Dialoge (1960) and the piano trio Presence  (1961). The Monologe forms a kind of triptych; all three compositions correspond to each other formally and are derived from the same symmetrical all-interval row; indeed, all three are  founded, down to details of note sequences, rhythmical and dynamic articulation, on almost identical structures. Zimmermann's concept of "pluralistic sound"- from the time of his opera "Die Soldaten" (1958-60) the dominant principle of his musical thinking and composing- is realized in Monologe perhaps even more clearly and comprehensively than in the  two sister works. 

Materials of the past and of the present, personal to the composer and borrowed from elsewhere, are subtly interwoven in a "broad texture of musical elements of time an experience". This pluralistic composing introduces skillfully fashioned collages of quotations: Bach, Messiaen, Debussy, Beethoven, Mozart, Gregorian Chant and Boogie-Woogie are recognizable- alienating, colouring and commenting on Zimmermann's train of thought. Spontaneity, eloquence and virtuosity schooled on earlier models - above all Liszt and Debussy - give this quasi-surrealistic world of dreams and associations an extremely telling actuality.

Side One:
 
a1-3: Gyorgy Ligeti-Three Pieces For Two Pianos

I-Monument (4:07)
II-Self-Portrait (With Reich And Riley And With Chopin In The Background) (7:03)
III-Movement (4:52)

a4: Bernd Alois Zimmermann-Perspektiven I (8:04)
Side Two

b1: Bernd Alois Zimmermann-Perspecktiven II (5:10)

b2: Bernd Alois Zimmermann-Monologue For Two Pianos (18:02)

Alois and Alfons Kontarsky-Pianos

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