Jeremy Denk: Ligeti/Beethoven

"Ligeti, a Hungarian composer, is perhaps best known today for his music from Stanley Kubrick's films 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut. Ligeti's etudes, Denk says, are like explorations of entirely new frontiers on the keyboard. 'Ligeti took the piano to places it had never been before, and makes demands of the pianist and the mind that had never been made before,' he says. "But all of it is derived from ideas from earlier piano etudes and his love of the great piano repertoire.' ... He moves swiftly between the descending chromatic madness of Ligeti and Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 32, the last piano sonata Beethoven wrote. 'The last Beethoven sonata seems to me [to be] one of the most profound musical journeys to infinity ever made,' he says. 'The whole piece seems to want to bring us from a present moment into this timeless space where everything is continuous and endless'" ("Jeremy Denk: Playing Ligeti with a Dash of Humor," Fresh Air from WHYY, 5/23/12).

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