Concerto Budapest

It is no novelty that the repertoire of the Ligeti Ensemble is compiled from the finest pieces of contemporary music, and quite frequently, some premieres are also featured on their programmes. It will also be the case this time around, as the British composer Sir Harrison Birtwistle's work Secret Theatre will be staged for the very time in Hungary. Although the programme consists entirely of instrumental pieces, there is an invisible theatre behind each one; it is clear what Zsolt Durkó’s composition (“Fire Music”) alludes to. The night’s conductor, Peter Eötvös, is fundamentally a visual type of composer, so even if his works are not based on a specific text, there is always a guiding thread along which he composes. In Shadows, we can relish resounding shadows with four instrument groups as protagonists, which play as the shadows of the flute and the clarinet. The mathematically-minded French composer, Pierre Boulez’ Dérive was “derived” from his pieces Répons and Messagesquisse. As the closure of the night comes a genuinely “Secret Theatre", Birtwistle's work, on which the composer himself commented, "What I do is something I call instrumental role-playing … I don't write an actual piece and then add a number of instruments – it is more like a play with persons that way, how they sound and what they say."