Name: György Ligeti
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György Ligeti

Richly coloured, rhythmically concise, expressively significant

In addition to having recorded all of György Ligeti's works for choir a cappella, the SWR Vokalensemble is offering workshops on the composer's work as part of a major school project and is also touring his music in Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, France and Italy in May and June.

Under principal conductor Yuval Weinberg, the SWR Vokalensemble has recorded György Ligeti's a cappella works on two CDs.

Apart from the LatinLux aeterna (1966) and the Three Fantasies after Friedrich Hölderlin (1982), György Ligeti has set exclusively Hungarian poetry to music for his a cappella works, preferring texts by the poets Bálint Balassa (1554-1594) and Sándor Weöres (1913-1989). In addition to the programmatic realisation of textual content, he is primarily interested in the special phonetic sequences, rhythms, intonations and accents of the Hungarian language, resulting in music that is richly coloured, rhythmically concise and expressively significant.

The SWR Vokalensemble will perform Ligeti's vocal works at the Ludwigsburg Schlossfestspiele (25 May), the Franz Liszt Music Academy Budapest (26 May), the Moers Festival (28 May), the Prague Spring Festival (28 May), Milano Musica (31 May), the Festival Manifeste Paris (19 June) and the Musikfest Stuttgart (22 June).

As early as March 21, the school project will come to a close in Stuttgart: the ARD broadcasting corporation has called for the nationwide music education project "The Ligeti Experiment". The SWR Vokalensemble is organising workshops in which the pupils learn to trust their ears and transform their inner images and fantasies into a film. As a closing event, there will be two film premieres, with the Vokalensemble singing new music that paints vivid pictures.

"A restless seeker with great independence and inventiveness"

In the summer of 2023, the Salzburg Festival demonstrated its close affinity with the music of György Ligeti through the concert series Time with Ligeti. Tabea Zimmermann and Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who played a key role in shaping the series, talked about their own relationship with the composer.

The multifaceted exhibition Ligeti Labyrinth, which was conceived by the Budapest Institute of Musicology and the Paul Sacher Foundation, was presented at the Basel Historical Museum until April 2024.

New publication

Composers with very different voices emerged from György Ligeti's composition class in Hamburg. For a joint book, many of them have compiled their memories of the teacher and of the musical issues that were negotiated in the class.

Birthday Music

On 28 May 2023, the 100th anniversary of György Ligeti's birth, the composer's music was heard in concert halls all over the world - in cities with which his life was closely linked, such as Budapest, Vienna, and Hamburg, as well as in faraway places like Tokyo and Mexico City.

Vienna celebrates György Ligeti's music

The Wiener Konzerthaus dedicated an extensive concert series to its honorary member György Ligeti on the occasion of his 100th birthday in 2023.

A new work by György Ligeti?

In any case, an almost unheard new version of Macabre Collage was performed independently by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI in February 2023.

Iridescent to unbridled: The Requiem

Hans Memling's Danzig altarpiece of the Last Judgement served György Ligeti as inspiration for the Dies irae from his Requiem, which became one of the most complex polyphonic works in music history. As a summary of his previous work and the nucleus of his new work, the Requiem plays a key role.