Ligeti: Six Bagatelles, Chamber Concerto & Ten Pieces for Wind Quintet (Live) [Remastered]

Conductor François-Xavier Roth and his crack ensemble Les Siècles have a reputation for cutting through to the raw essentials of a piece. That works just as well on this album of music by the Hungarian avant-garde composer György Ligeti as it does on their recordings of Ravel, Stravinsky, and Debussy. The playing in the first of Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet is spectacularly piquant and precise, while No. 3 has a scampering sense of mischief. The strange, crepuscular world of the Chamber Concerto snaps into vivid focus in Roth’s sharply textured rendition, while the helter-skelter patterns of the Ten Pieces for Wind Quintet are etched with bristling clarity. Every bar of music is alive in Les Siècles’ outstandingly vibrant reading of these pieces.