LIGETI Six Bagatelles for wind quintet (1953)
- Jennifer Nitchman, flute
- Lisa McCullough Lalev, oboe
- Diana Haskell, clarinet
- Felicia Foland, bassoon
- Jennifer Montone, horn
KURTAG Officium Breve in Memoriam Andreæ Szervánsky Opus 28 (1989)
- Alison Harney, violin
- Eva Kozma, violin
- Bryan Florence, viola
- David Kim, cello
BARTOK String Quartet No. 3 (1927)
- Alison Harney, violin
- Eva Kozma, violin
- Bryan Florence, viola
- David Kim, cello
The exhibition Brancusi and Serra in Dialogue was the context for a chamber music series co-organized with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. After the Steve Reich program this concert concentrated on an earlier European modernism, out of which emerged Constantin Brancusi. The compositions of Bela Bartók, György Ligeti and György Kurtág reinterpreted and paid homage to sources of inspiration used by the Romanian sculptor, from Eastern European folklore to Western avant-garde.
Bartók profoundly affected the two younger composers. His death in 1945 was a great loss to the students of the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, where Ligeti and Kurtág had just arrived to study. In the wake of this, the two young men became close friends. Ligeti’s Six Bagatelles for wind quintet is not too distant from Romanian and Hungarian folk origins, while Kurtág’s Officium Breve not only includes references to Bartók, but also to Anton Webern. The concert concluded with Bartók’s String Quartet No. 3, which has a composition structure that would greatly influence Ligeti and Kurtag.
