Chamber Concerto, for 13 instruments (1969-1970)

I. Corrente (Fliessend)
II. Calmo, sostenuto
III. Movimiento preciso e meccanico
IV. Presto

Schönberg Ensemble
Reinbert de Leeuw

Ligeti embarked on his Chamber Concerto just after completing Ramifications; the Chamber Concerto was premiered on October 1, 1970 in Berlin by the ensemble Die Reihe, under the direction of Ligeti's like-minded colleague Friederich Cerha. Similarly to Ten Pieces for Woodwind Quintet (1968), each of the four movements focus on a particular quality of musical expression, rather than on a motivic or melodic base. Ligeti seems to be casting back to a similar approach found in Bartók, or even Bach, in a conscious consideration of music history that he seemed to avoid while developing his style in the decade or so after he had left Hungary.

The scoring for the Chamber Concerto is flute, clarinet (doubling bass clarinet, horn, trombone, harpsichord (doubling Hammond organ), piano (doubling celeste), and solo strings. As he did in Continuum for harpsichord (1968) and Ramifications (1968 - 1969), Ligeti superimposes rapidly articulated, simple motifs to form a glittering surface both moving and still. This is how the first movement of the Chamber Concerto begins; it continues in this fashion with some registral and dynamic variation until the three-minute mark. At that point, the ensemble interrupts the texture with a sustained E-flat in several octaves, a favorite Ligeti gambit mirroring both the first movement of the Cello Concerto (1966) and the first movement of the Ten Pieces for Woodwind Quintet. There is also a relatively brief moment of broad atonal melody in octaves before the Chamber Concerto's first movement ends. The second movement is timbrally quite different, with more defined gestures, and a generally greater tendency toward melody. Ligeti's harmonic language, which evolved from the virtually undifferentiated clusters in Atmosphères (1961), and became more clarified in the Ten Pieces and String Quartet No. 2, is yet more refined and specific here. The third movement is an extended "roomful of clocks," a clear example of Ligeti's polymetric tendencies, of which there are shorter sections in the Cello Concerto, String Quartet No. 2, and, of course, the (literally) one-hundred metronomes of Poème symphonique (1962). Again in this movement, the listener perceives Ligeti's increasing concern for distinct harmony. The fourth movement shows clearly the soloistic, "concerto" aspects of the piece. A solo clarinet tremolo becomes a fast ascending scale for several instruments; the rapidly cycling chromatic gestures form the fabric through which the occasional melody shines. The Chamber Concerto is the clearest link between Ligeti's supersaturated textural music of the 1960s, and the harmonically clarified, polyrhythmic pieces of the 1970s (Monument-Selbsportrait-Bewegung for two pianos) and the early 1980s (the Horn Trio). [Allmusic.com]

Art by René Magritte

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