The Gyorgy Ligeti piano etudes – Recital with Stavros Laparidis

The piano recital on June 11th 2012 at Michael Cacoyannis foundation with the pianist Stavros Laparidis will present all the Ligeti etudes (books I – III). The pieces make extreme demands not only on the pianist, but also on the audience, too.

These etudes make allusions to the extra-musical sources which inspired the composer to write them. Among the main inspirational sources are the chaos theory, fractal images and mathematics, African Sub-Saharan folk music, Indonesian Balinese music, and the studies for player piano by Conlon Nancarrow. Some of the titles of the etudes have programmatic meaning.

In terms of the compositional technique, polyrhythm is the main technique used in all etudes by Ligeti. However, the composer approaches polyrhythmic webs in a different manner in every etude, e.g. in a polyphonic context, with polytempi, with irregular accents against metrically regular ones a. o.

In terms of the musical style, Ligeti avoids intentionally any standard compositional stream and intermingles elements from modernism and post-modernism in such a way that his music becomes stylistically unclear. His style lies somewhere in between traditionalism and avant-garde but without favoring either one.