Gyorgy Ligeti Edition Vol 8 - Le Grand Macabre

Gyorgy Ligeti Edition Vol 8 - Le Grand Macabre

Gyorgy Ligeti Edition Vol 8 - Le Grand Macabre
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Performer: Gyorgy Ligeti
Composer: Gyorgy Ligeti
Orchestra: Gyorgy Ligeti
Performer: Frode Olsen
Conductor: Frode Olsen
Conductor: Esa-Pekka Salonen
Performer: Esa-Pekka Salonen
Performer: Derek Lee Ragin
Performer: London Sinfonietta Voices
Performer: Charlotte Hellekant
Performer: Jard Van Nes
Orchestra: Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus
Performer: Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus
Performer: Laura Claycomb
Performer: Sibylle Ehlert
Performer: Graham Clark
Performer: Steven Cole
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1999-03-23
Music Label: Sony
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
  1. Car Horn Prelude / Autohupen-Vorspiel Pr?lude aux klaxons
  2. Scene 1: "Dies irae"
  3. Scene 1: "Away, you swagpot!"
  4. Scene 1: "Shut up!"
  5. Scene 1: "Oh ...!" - "Amanda! Can do no more!"
  6. Scene 1: "Ha-ha-ha-ha! Hey! Give me my requisites"
  7. Scene 1: "Melting snow is thy breast"
  8. Second Car Hor Prelude / Zweites Autohupen-Vorspiel / Deuxi?me pr?lude aux klaxons
  9. Scene 2: "One! Two! Three! Five!"
  10. Scene 2: "Shapley and attractive figure"
  11. Scene 2: "Venus! Venus!"
  12. Scene 2: "Stop!" -"Sh! ... Quiet, for heaven's sake!"
  13. Scene 2: "Who's there? A man?" - "A man!"
  14. Finale: "Fire and death I bring"
Music CD 2
  1. Scene 3.: Doorbell Prelude
  2. Scene 3.: "Arse- licker, arse- kisser!"
  3. Scene 3.: "Posture exercises!"
  4. Scene 3.: "Tsk..." - "Psssst!"
  5. Scene 3.: "Ahh! ... Secret cypher!"
  6. Scene 3.: "Hurray, hurray! My wife is dead"
  7. Scene 3.: Nekrotzar's Entrance
  8. Scene 3.: "Woe! Ooh!" - "For the day of wrath"
  9. Scene 3.: "There's no need to fear"
  10. Scene 3.: "Up!"- "Drink!" - "Up!"
  11. Scene 3.: "Hmm! it's delicious!"
  12. Scene 3.: "Where am I? What time is it?"
  13. Scene 3.: Interlude
  14. Scene 4.: "Ghost Astradamors, are you dead?"
  15. Scene 4. Finale.: "Ah, it was good"

Music reviews of Gyorgy Ligeti Edition Vol 8 - Le Grand Macabre

Music Review: Good opera, probably not destined for classic status
Rating: 4 Stars

Though I haven't heard the German-language recording (the original libretto is in German), I have to believe that, in a language in which the listener lacks fluency, the immediacy of the text's impact would be lost. That's a serious loss when one is dealing (as here) with music that exists largely to amplify a text: rather like the acting in a silent movie (or--perhaps a more appropriate comparison here--the action in a Punch-and-Judy show). This English-language recording I therefore found very welcome.

No recording of course can give one a feel for the bizarre stage sets that (I have to think) must be essential to the impact of this opera in a live performance.

Relatively new though this opera is, to me it already seems somewhat dated, heavily redolent of the early 1970s. It also reminds one of Thornton Wilder's THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH, in that, after showing our Cosmic Problems, it facilely solves them by telling us (sort of) that Love Conquers All.

It IS refreshing to find such a broadly-targeted satire not unloading principally on the United States. Instead, there's a good deal of comic (and pretty funny) business about the follies of parliamentary government.



Description of Gyorgy Ligeti Edition Vol 8 - Le Grand Macabre

It's apocalypse now in Hungarian composer Gy?rgy Ligeti's brilliantly imaginative opera about a comic-book Armageddon. Ligeti revised and tightened the original 1970s version of this masterpiece, which boils over with Brechtian grotesques. Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, always sensitive to the pulse of the most compelling contemporary music, brings off a wacky, threatening, sardonic, and exhilarating account. --Thomas May
It seems oddly fitting that 1999--a year marked by Y2K paranoia and doom-and-gloom trainspotters--is the year in which Sony chose to release this brilliantly charged version of Gy?rgy Ligeti's Le Grande Macabre, the Hungarian master's comic tale of apocalypse and "what me worry?" Originally composed between 1975 and 1977, Macabre follows the various bumbling citizens of "Breughelland" during "anytime." Problem is, their time is about to end, thanks to grim reaper Nekrotzar (played with deadpan grotesquerie by bass-baritone Willard White), who, aided by his bumbling servant Piet the Pot, has decided to lay waste to the world. Of course, nothing ever goes quite right. A pair of indistinguishable lovers (including the radiant mezzo of Charlotte Hellekant) sleeps right through the Armageddon, and the Great Macabre is reduced to asking himself, "Have I not just laid to waste the entire goddamned world?" in the hilarious final scene. Esa-Pekka Salonen's live recording zeroes in on the score's sardonic humor as well as its postmodern raidings. Compared to the first Macabre on disc--sung in German and not as compact as the revised, English version that Ligeti prepared for the 1997 Salzburg Festival revival--this one is the keeper, with better sound staging, wildly imaginative orchestrations, lucid program notes, and an enjoyably perky English rendition of the original text. Hearing all this perfect craziness--the townspeople mimicking a skipping record as they sing "Our Great Leader" in the third scene, the car horn prelude that leads off the production, the absurdist arguments of the Black and White Ministers--is a comic delight. Here is one of Ligeti's masterpieces--a must for fans of modern opera--in its full glory. --Jason Verlinde

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