Composer of the Week is broadcast on Radio 3 at 12pm, Monday to Friday. Programmes in May are:
1-5 May Walton
8-12 May Pauline Viardot and her circle
15-19 May Tchaikovsky
22-26 May Ligeti
29 May – 2 June Domenico Scarlatti
Trying to grasp the essence of György Ligeti is a futile exercise. He was by nature a maker of ironically distant, shape-shifting pieces, as private and ultimately ungraspable as the man himself. Like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland (one of his favourite books, which he yearned to turn into an opera), the music has no solidity, no essence. It’s a whirlwind of airy gestures, gauzy sounds, exaggeratedly drooping melodies and loud comic pratfalls. We are ushered into a glistening and somewhat sinister private world, but just as we’re finding our bearings it all shrinks to near-nothingness, like the Cheshire Cat’s enigmatic smile.
