
Trying to grasp the essence of György Ligeti is a futile exercise. He was by nature a maker of ironically distant, shape-shifting pieces, as private and ultimately ungraspable as the man himself. Like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in
Wonderland (one of his favourite books, which he yearned to turn into an opera), the music has no solidity, no essence. It’s a whirlwind of airy gestures, gauzy sounds, exaggeratedly drooping melodies and loud comic pratfalls. We are ushered into a glistening and somewhat sinister private world, but just as we’re finding our bearings it all shrinks to near-nothingness, like the Cheshire Cat’s enigmatic smile.
Ligeti had good reason to think of music as a fantastical self-made world, into which he could retreat. Right up to his early 30s, he lived in a state somewhere between anxiety and panic. That existential terror was rooted in the difficulties of being born as a Jew in a part of Transylvania that was rife with antisemitism and constantly fought over between Hungary and Romania – the name of his hometown and the language of his education changed twice, from Romanian to Hungarian and then back again.
This story is from the May 2023 edition of BBC Music Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the May 2023 edition of BBC Music Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In

Look back in anguish
Despite Korngold's denials, there is much to suggest that his Symphony in F sharp is a grim depiction of the dark days of Nazism, argues Jessica Duchen

Come again?
If something is worth hearing once it's worth hearing again, explains Rebecca Franks, who charts a history of the use of echoes in music

THE BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE INTERVIEW
Music by women and composers of colour is not a separate set of pieces from the ones we know

A brilliant melting pot of discoverable works
Erik Levi enjoys Patricia Kopatchinskaja and friends' eloquent performances of lesser-known works by exiled composers

Pierre Boulez
Tom Stewart celebrates a composer, conductor and musical iconoclast for whom breaking from tradition was not an option but a must

Vienna's cacophonous concert ends to the sound of slapping
‘Fighting at a Schoenberg concert.

Molto humoroso
Cartoonist and broadcaster Gerard Hoffnung lampooned the world of classical music with splendid affection and wit, writes Andrew Green

There and back again
With retrospectives on album and in concert this month, Oscar-winning composer Howard Shore reflects on his years in Middle-earth and tells Michael Beek why he has a lot to thank the LPO for...

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN Pick a theme... and name your seven favourite examples
Composer-conductor Odaline de la Martinez prizes tempo, swing and bounce in her top rhythmic works

Crystal clear with plenty of punch
The great is, they say, the enemy of the good, and that is certainly the case with David Sanger’s interpretation of Vierne’s Organ Symphony No. 1, which stands head and shoulders above a strong field of alternative versions.