György Ligeti cultivated a special relationship with the piano throughout his life. The piano was the instrument on which he began his musical training, the one for which he wrote his first and very last pieces, and which he used as a workbench and as a medium of musical reflection throughout all his successive creative phases. Now, in a lecture recital, Pierre-Laurent Aimard throws light on Ligeti’s relationship with the piano, as well as on the evolution of Ligeti’s piano style from his works of youth to the late piano études. With the aid of selected works (including hitherto unpublished works from Ligeti’s youth), Aimard makes Ligeti’s incredible successive metamorphoses tangible to the ear. In a subsequent round table discussion, Aimard will fathom specific aspects of Ligeti’s relationship with the piano in dialogue with Hungarian musicologist and Ligeti specialist Márton Kerékfy.

This Ligeti event shall begin with an unconventional introduction to Ligeti’s experimental thinking. The focus will be on Musica ricercata (1951-1953), a work in which the composer, in the midst of cultural isolation, attempted to create a new tonal language on the basis of strict rules and tasks he set for himself. Pupils of schools from the district of Duisburg-Marxloh have been dealing with Musica ricercata during the entire academic year by developing their own choreographies and music pieces under the encouragement and supervision of Petra Jebavy, Klaus Hagge, and Katja Bergen. Thus, an introduction in sound to Ligeti’s work will feature the results of the children’s work, followed by an entire performance of Musica ricercata.