| All Artists: Parker Quartet Title: Ligeti: String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 Members Wishing: 2 Total Copies: 0 Label: Naxos Original Release Date: 1/1/2009 Re-Release Date: 12/15/2009 Genre: Classical Styles: Chamber Music, Historical Periods, Classical (c.1770-1830) Number of Discs: 1 SwapaCD Credits: 1 UPC: 747313078172 |
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Search - Parker Quartet :: Ligeti: String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2
 | Parker Quartet Ligeti: String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 Genre: Classical Gyorgy Ligeti's choral and orchestral music hit the mainstream when it was featured in the soundtrack of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but his equally remarkable chamber works remain less well known. While indebted to his compatr... more » |
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Product Description Gyorgy Ligeti's choral and orchestral music hit the mainstream when it was featured in the soundtrack of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but his equally remarkable chamber works remain less well known. While indebted to his compatriot Bartók for its folk-inflected passages, Ligeti's First Quartet, subtitled Métamorphoses nocturnes, is nonetheless a work of striking originality. The Second Quartet, composed around fifteen years later, abounds in contrasts between glacial stillness and manic activity, mechanistic pizzicatos and gentle oscillations. His early Andante and Allegro is richly expressive and easily accessible. Similarly Requested CDs
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CD ReviewsSensational Performances J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 01/17/2010 (5 out of 5 stars) "The big news here is the performances of the Parker Quartet, a group of young musicians who came out of the New England Conservatory. The members are Daniel Chong and Karen Kim, violins, Jessica Bodner, viola and Kee-Hyun Kim, cello. In this recording of the Ligeti string quartets they are up against some of the most admired quartets around -- e.g., the Arditti and the Hagen Quartets -- and they give no quarter. I actually prefer their playing to either of those marvelous groups. Part of that may be due to the exceptionally clean and lifelike sound given them by engineer Norbert Kraft and co-producer Bonnie Silver, but the lion's share of the credit goes to the musicians themselves. This is extraordinarily difficult music to play (as well as put across) and the Parkers are virtually without fault. I would travel miles to hear them play live.
As to the music itself, there are three pieces here: the First Quartet (1953-54), the Second Quartet (1968) and the Andante and Allegretto (1950). The last of these is a two movement set that Ligeti wrote within the stringent guidelines in Hungary at the time: easily accessible music that is generally tonal, uses folk elements and is sugary without being cloying. The First Quartet is subtitled 'Métamorphoses nocturnes' and is indebted to the string quartets of Bartók, particularly his Quartets No. 3 & 4. It is in one continuous movement that nonetheless comprises the usual four movements of a quartet: a sonata-allegro, a manic presto, a slow movement containing a boozy waltz, and a final energetic movement that collapses into a resigned conclusion. The Second Quartet is by far the best-known of Ligeti's quartets and is notable for the composer's penchant for dramatic gestures from moments of breath-stopping stillness, to manic episodes, to unison harmonics, varieties of pizzicati and jazzy rhythms cheek by jowl with sections of brutal dissonance. There is not one dull moment in this five-movement, twenty-minute work. The Parkers play it for it all it's worth. I could not stop listening to it. And each time through I found new things to marvel at. This after knowing this quartet for years from the earlier recordings. A definite winner. Scott Morrison" |
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