György Ligeti’s piano concerto was performed for the first time at the St. Petersburg Philharmonic

The Piano Concerto of György Ligeti, a classic of the European post-war avant-garde, was performed for the first time in the Great Hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. Alexey Nyaga took the helm of the First Philharmonic Orchestra (ZKR), and Alexander Gindin performed the solo part. How the Honored Band of Russia, conductor and soloist coped with performing music that was new to them, says Gulara Sadikh-zade.

The centenary of the birth of György Ligeti, one of the most influential composers of the twentieth century, is celebrated this year by the entire enlightened world. His only opera Le Grand Macabre (“The Great Deadviarch”) is being staged this season in the best opera houses in Europe: the premieres have just been held at the Frankfurt Opera (produced by Vasily Barkhatov, set designer by Zinovy ​​Margolin, conductor by Thomas Guggeis) and at the Vienna State Opera. State Opera (director – Jan Lauers, conductor – Pablo Heras-Casado); The Great Deadviarch is expected to be staged at the upcoming Munich Opera Festival in June 2024 (directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski, conducted by Kent Nagano), and in December it will be held in Paris at the House of Radio in concert performance under the baton of François-Xavier Roth.

The St. Petersburg Philharmonic decided not to lag behind and also celebrate Ligeti’s anniversary – fortunately, there has long been a need to expand the repertoire of the First Philharmonic Orchestra, the scope of which has until now been limited to classical-romantic opuses, from Beethoven to Mahler, Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Prokofiev. Both philharmonic orchestras—ZKR and ASO—grazed in this field for years and decades, which inevitably led to conservatism in musical tastes and performing practices. Among orchestra musicians, it is considered good manners to make fun of new music and speak disparagingly about its authors, and this aesthetic attitude was secretly encouraged by orchestra leaders. But it is known what the rejection of the new leads to: the degradation of performing culture and disorientation in the current musical context. Moreover, in the case of Ligeti’s music there is no need to even talk about formal novelty; his main works, which brought him world fame – “Apparitions” (“Visions”), “Atmospheres” (“Atmospheres”), “Lontano” (“Distance”), choral “Requiem” “Lux Aeterna” (“Eternal Light”) ,” were written about 60 years ago and have long become classics of the 20th century, entering the repertoire of the world’s leading orchestras.

If you are immune to the languages ​​of new music, and do not want to learn to understand and speak this language, you will inevitably lag behind in development.

Yaroslav Timofeev, a musicologist and leading lecturer at the Moscow Philharmonic, who was invited to St. Petersburg to conduct a concert with the beautiful title “Spell of Time” – the first of four concerts in the Eighth Philharmonic Subscription “Classics. New”, where, according to the organizers, the public will finally begin to gradually become accustomed to the perception of music of the second half of the twentieth century. In subsequent concerts of the subscription it is planned to perform opuses by Luigi Nono and Tori Takemitsu, as well as a new, as yet unwritten composition by St. Petersburg composer Nastasya Khrushcheva.

The evening’s program consisted of three works, two of which were extremely popular and were chosen – this is obvious – to please the tastes of the public and thereby reconcile them with listening to Ligeti’s “inconvenient” and uncomfortable for the ear opus.

The concert opened with the famous “Carmen Suite” by Bizet-Shchedrin, and ended with “Bolero” by Ravel. Timofeev compared these works to two sweet pills, which are designed to sweeten the middle, “bitter” one – perhaps this was an example of negative programming: such a comparison only made the public even more wary.

Conductor Alexey Nyaga, a graduate of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, periodically performs with both philharmonic orchestras, and has experience working in the opera theater, conducted both works quite convincingly: clearly, clearly, confidently, observing the precise rhythm of “Bolero”, skillfully playing with tempo changes in “Carmen” -suite”. His sense of rhythm turned out to be excellent, and this quality is especially important in compositions based on dance rhythms. Good contact was established with the orchestra; laconic manual technique, clear aftertaste, the ability to easily switch from tempo to tempo – these advantages are not as common as it might seem, even among the most experienced and venerable conductors. Nyaga definitely has a conducting acumen and flair, and he also managed to get along with the ZKR orchestra – and this is a separate talent.

The orchestra, and it was noticeable, tried very hard. And although the team is now, for objective reasons, not in the best shape (Yuri Temirkanov, unfortunately, in recent years he has not appeared at the conductor’s stand at all), he could, under certain conditions, quickly make up for the lost former coherence and teamwork that once distinguished the string group; Today the sound of the strings seemed a little “disheveled”, and the unisons seemed rather dubious. But the percussion and winds – especially in “Bolero” – were at their best. All the solos sounded concisely and expressively, not a single kick happened, not a single inaccurate introduction (however, the orchestra plays “Bolero” quite often).

But problems arose with the performance of Ligeti’s Piano Concerto, of such a nature that they practically canceled out the positive fact of turning to the new score.

If the Philharmonic set out to accustom its audience to new music, to shockingly harsh harmonies, unusual forms of presentation and stunningly unpredictable rhythms, then it was worth playing the opus perfectly down to the smallest detail. If you play approximately and carelessly, then the audience, on the contrary, will turn away from the new music, strengthening the conviction that everything they hear is “not music,” “complete nonsense,” and “chaos.”

Here I would like to express my complaints not even to the conductor and orchestra, but first of all to the soloist. The orchestra really strained itself, trying to portray a complex micropolyphonic texture, when the voices, written with a minimum interval, are located very closely to each other, and the complexity of the rhythm and time signature makes it even more difficult for the precise introductions of the voices.

As a result, despite the conductor’s efforts, the musicians entered very approximately, turning Ligeti’s carefully written score into a kind of aleatorics, when the written notes are played at an arbitrary tempo.

But the piano part performed by Gindin, especially in the fast movements of the five-movement Concerto, sounded completely indistinct and sometimes barely audible. At times, the pianist, in order to cope with purely technical difficulties, extremely lightened the force of striking the keys, switching to light touches; but the solo part in the Concerto, written for a supervirtuoso, requires strong fingers, incredible fluency and uncanny coordination.

Gindin’s enthusiasm for this music is beyond doubt – he himself told how he was “infected” by Ligeti’s music after hearing the soundtrack to the film Eyes Wide Shut starring Tom Cruise, when, while watching the hero, a sound based on two sounds of a small second, the second piece from the early piano cycle “Musica Ricercata”. Which piece did the pianist play as an encore? But this piece is quite simple to perform, there are only two sounds that are repeated endlessly, sometimes in octave doubling. The same cannot be said about the Piano Concerto, written by Ligeti late in his career: the score was completed in 1988 and is an example of the complexity of the composer’s late style. This overcomplicated text turned out to be a stumbling block for both the pianist, the orchestra, and, unfortunately, for the enlightened public.