Ligeti's Etude #13

For this week's clip, I wanted to send you all some modern piano music. My first choice was to share with you some Ligeti Etudes. These works are really interesting and are some of the most important and influential piano pieces of the past twenty years. Ligeti died two years ago while working on his third book of etudes. He began the first book in the mid 1980's At first, I had difficulty finding recordings of exceptional pianists performing these works. But with some adventurous browsing I stumbled upon an amazing pianist who has prepared some artful cinematography and a stunning performance of one of the Ligeti etudes. I continued to peruse this pianist's collection of videos and found some wonderful four-hand works. Check them out for yourself.

Ligeti is a Romanian composer who became famous for writing the soundtrack for 2001: Space Odyssey. Since then he has remained among the most important and influential composers of the late 20th century, especially for the piano. His etudes are considered to be some of the most challenging and physically exhausting works for solo piano.

The first video is of Ligeti's etude number 13, "The Devil's Staircase". The second video is a two-piano tango, previously unfamiliar to me, of astonishing choreography.