Ligeti's 'out there' Violin Concerto
Composers Datebook · Oct 8, 2026 · 2:00
Composers Datebook · Oct 8, 2026 · 2:00
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On today’s date in 1992, one of the strangest — and some would say most strikingly original — violin concertos of the late 20th century had its premiere performance in Cologne, Germany. It was written by Transylvanian-born Hungarian composer György Ligeti.
He became famous in the west when some of his music appeared in the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick used his music to evoke the eerie and empty vastness of outer space. And, in fact, Ligeti was fascinated by the sounds traditional orchestral instruments make when pressed to the extreme limits of their range — their own sonic “outer limits.” There’s some of that in his 1992 Violin Concerto, plus a dash of the traditionally melancholic Hungarian strain familiar from the music of his famous compatriot Béla Bartók. Finally, tossed in for good measure, is his puckish fondness for thumbing his nose at life, the universe and traditional concert hall decorum.
As if to counterbalance his melancholic strain, or perhaps just express it in a more surprising way, there’s a good deal of the clown in Ligeti, who includes a chorus of ocarinas in the score of his violin concerto.
György Ligeti (1923-2006): Violin Concerto; Saschko Gavrilov, violin; Ensemble InterContemporain; Pierre Boulez, conductor; DG 439 808
