György Ligeti's music is characterized by an unprecedented openness with which this great Austro-Hungarian sound magician encountered a wide variety of cultures and genres in his search for the new. His son Lukas Ligeti has inherited this curiosity and moves as a border crosser between different musical traditions - both as a composer and as a percussionist with his band Burkina Electric, based in Ouagadougou.
György Ligeti's piano concerto is regarded as his aesthetic credo: free from stylistic constraints, a tour de force full of pianistic discoveries. Whole-tone scales and pentatonicism, several keys simultaneously, complex rhythms and harmonically overwhelming sound journeys - the starting point of which can also be found in the composer's admiration for African polyphony. Composer Hannah Kendall's family roots lie in Guyana. She has long since made a name for herself in her native Great Britain. For example, with her orchestral piece "The Spark Catchers", inspired by a poem about female workers in a London match factory, which was premiered at the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall in 2017.
Lukas Ligeti's suite, written for his own band Burkina Electric and orchestra, explores the tension between the different approaches of these ensembles from different worlds, the classical symphony orchestra on the one hand and the African pop band on the other. It is a kind of concerto grosso that artistically unites the two groups involved. A musical and conceptual adventure.
April 7, 2024
