TRANTEC

Aus Venezia E Napoli

Ligeti’s piano études are some of the most splendid works ever composed for this instrument. Every ambitious player is eventually going to examine these milestones of contemporary music literature. The musical community had to wait for new piano works from the pen of Ligeti for quite a long time; now a new volume has been published: Études pour piano, troisième livre. In the years 1997 to 2001 the magician of sound wrote new études which pose challenges to the pianist that are revealed only at a second glance.
XV White on White (1995)
XVI Pour Irina (1997)
XVII A bout de souffle (1998)
XVIII Canon (2001)

The cycle of fugues is introduced and concluded by a Praeludium and Postludium, the second formed by turning the Praeludium upside down and reading it backwards. In solving technical problems he posed himself, Hindemith created not a dry exercise but a work of considerable imagination. Intellectual achievement and sheer delight in playing are not mutually exclusive. The Ludus is a graphic example of the composer’s delight in the fantastic, offered to his wife, born under the sign of Leo, as a birthday present. He illustrated the work with coloured pencil, among other things drawing a lion for each entry of the subject of the fugues and for each of the twelve a different kind of lion, according to the character of the music, originally published in a limited edition but providing an instructive formal analysis of the music.
Präludium
Fugen und Interludien
Postludium