Quatuor Akilone

"Clocks and clouds'. This is the term used to describe the period during which Ligeti wrote his Second Quartet. It is music made of pulsation and texture. After a youth strongly influenced by his compatriot Bartók, Ligeti, who had fled communist Hungary, began this second period, which was marked by the search for a more unstructured, less "speaking" music, made up of snatches and whispers, dialogue dust and shadows calling for movement.

The central and masterly movement of Ligeti's 2nd quartet, Come un meccanismo di precisione, in pizzicati, brilliantly transcends a work of timbre already present in Ravel or Debussy. The poem "Pluie" by Francis Ponge, an iridescent reference and magical extension of this movement, is a sumptuous poetic echo.

The ineffable is also Schubert's realm. This last quartet, the most 'contrapuntal', very close in its vision to the quintet for two cellos, was written in the only year after Beethoven's death, a year that was a phenomenal creative space for Schubert. This work opens up a world of chiaroscuro legends. Schubert's works are like scenes without images. With the power of tales and legends rooted in the mists of time, they are ultimately the impalpable material of which our dreams are made, the music of the ineffable.

György LIGETI (1923-2006)
String quartet n.2 (1967-1968) 21

Franz SCHUBERT (1797-1828)
Quartet No.15 in G major D.887    45'