From Microcosm to Macrocosm Listening to Bartók and Ligeti’s works in this selection, we can expect a ‘cosmic disorientation’, a total reinterpretation of all our knowledge thanks to Bartók and Ligeti’s ‘microcosm’ and ‘macrocosm’.

Although Bartók’s Mikrokosmos series of more than one hundred and fifty smaller and larger works was originally written with a pedagogical purpose – for no other reason than to support his own son Peter’s piano studies – it is the essence of his music, and anyone who wishes to study Bartók’s oeuvre in the depth it deserves should begin with these works, since they offer the inexhaustible inexhaustibility of Bartók’s inspiration. In this program, which provides a coherent link between the works of Bartók and Ligeti, we will hear twelve movements of Mikrokosmos.

György Ligeti’s Études are of a difficulty that is a challenge to the human spirit, and are comparable in virtuosity to (concert) etudes by the great romantic composers (and often exceed them in difficulty). Ligeti cites Chopin and Liszt as his main sources of inspiration, as well as a number of Far Eastern influences (such as gamelan music) and African tribal music, and the music and art of Conlon Nancarrow and Thelonious Monk. He particularly emphasises the experience of touch and the ‘moment of danger’ experienced by the performer. Eight of Ligeti’s three-volume series of Études are heard in this programme, in which the author is represented not only by the Études but also by the early Musica Ricercata, with four pieces from the cycle; the Hungarian-influenced No. 5 (Lamentoso), the Balkan folk music No. 8 (Vivace), the 9th (Béla Bartók in memoriam) and the 11th (Omaggio a Girolamo Frescobaldi), which pays tribute to the Italian Baroque master Girolamo Frescobaldi.

László Borbély, Piano