Ligeti 100

Hardly any composer of the late 20th century has interpreted the concertante juxtaposition of solo and tutti more intelligently than György Ligeti. His Cello Concerto of 1966 interweaves the cello almost completely with the clusters of the small orchestra over long stretches. The 1970 Chamber Concerto, on the other hand, treats each of the ensemble instruments as soloists in their own right. With the spectacularly virtuosic concertos from the 1980s, on the other hand, Ligeti opens up entirely new degrees of complexity for the genre, both rhythmically and harmonically. Here, too, it is the dense chamber-musical interlocking of all voices that makes the coming together of the one and the many so exciting.