A Scottish Ligeti Trip (Hamburg Concerto)

In late January I went up to Scotland (Glasgow and Edinburgh) to give two pre-concert talks on Ligeti's last major work the Hamburg Concerto for Horn and Chamber Orchestra performed by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (they also played Ligeti's Chamber Concerto which I didn't hear). I was impressed by the quality of the playing of the SCO as this is an extremely demanding and complex work. The excellent soloist was Alec Frank-Gemmill (on both French and Natural Horn) and the conductor Robin Ticciati showed a thorough understanding of the score. The work is curious for two reasons: it is in seven brief movements which are often divided up into smaller sections making it 14 in total; and it makes extensive use of the strange and beautiful tunings of the upper harmonics of the natural horn. As one goes up the harmonic series, the notes gradually deviate from the equally tempered scale of the piano, sometimes to an alarming degree. In places the natural horn quartet in the orchestra (parts which are almost as demanding as the soloist's part) are all in different keys - F,E, Bb, and D. Ligeti combines the 'out-of-tune' notes from each horn to generate quite alien-sounding harmonies that are disturbing but also beautiful. It seems to me that it would be almost impossible to be able to calculate the precise results of these combinations, but there does seem to be a strange logic in the progressions - for example in the 'Choral' in the second movement. The fourth movement is also quite interesting in the way that it combines elements of minimalism and serialism in quite an original manner.
     I also ran a Ligeti study day in Edinburgh which included a question and answer section from the soloist and conductor who explained some of the challenges of the work. These included the problems of playing natural horns high up and hitting notes that one would usually avoid (ie the oddly tuned harmonics). Robin talked about the importance of having an image of each movement in your head before working with the orchestra, and the importance of avoiding listening to other people's recordings. I felt that the audience were quite positive towards the concerto, and they said that they would have liked to hear it twice in the concert to help their understanding. This is an excellent point as it is difficult for even experienced contemporary music listeners to make sense of a new work on one hearing (whatever they might say!).
   At the end of the day I got the participants to create and perform their own compositions based on Ligeti's ideas and techniques (see http://www.sco.org.uk/experience/blog/2012/01/exploring-ligeti  for pictures) which produced some rather interesting and unusual work. It is daunting doing this kind of activity if you are an amateur musician (or just a music-lover) and I felt everyone put a lot of effort into making the best pieces possible.