Last night the young Melbourne-based Flinders Quartet (left) played Gyorgi Ligeti's first string quartet, "Metamorphoses nocturnes," and a retired opera singer sang some new songs by a youngish Australian composer.The highlight was the Ligeti, whose music I've not really enjoyed before, perhaps because I've never heard it live. The first string quartet was inspired, we were told, by a study of Bartok's 3rd and 4th string quartets (which, apparently, were not being performed in Hungary in the early 1950s). It conveys some of the solemn magic and exuberant dancing of those pieces, as well as abundant good humor. It took me back to one of my great music memories, a marathon performance of all six Bartok quartets by the Takacs String Quartet in January 2000 in Alice Tully Hall. I arrived at that concert a Bartok sceptic and left a true believer.
The Flinders Quartet played the Ligeti with vigor, precision and beauty - and hearing it in the warmth of an intimate space took me back to another place and time: Vienna, thirty years ago. We were living there at the time, and my parents often took us (my sister too? I don't remember) to chamber music recitals in the building on the Ring where my father was working. Chamber music up close and - as part of a series of convivial evenings - personal is a wonderful thing. How lucky I was to get to know it already as a child. (I don't remember if I thought I was lucky at the time!)
The Ligeti took me back to Vienna 1977 for another reason: my best friend at school then was Gyorgi Ligeti's son, Lukas. I wonder what happened to him? Aha, just googled: he's a composer and percussionist, and lives - where else - in New York! Think I'll drop him a line. Why should not Gert's soirée in Melbourne reunite two New Yorkers who met as children in Vienna?
