The Ligeti Project IV (2004)

"Fourth in the Ligeti Project series, this remarkable disc includes works from various phases of Ligeti's career: the earliest, his Requiem, dating from the early '60s, and the later Hamburg Concerto, completed in 2002. Ligeti's Requiem, for soprano, mezzo, chorus, and orchestra, convincingly depicts an expanding, engulfing realm of despair, darkness, and hopelessness reminiscent of the sinister chaos of Hieronymus Bosch's apocalyptic paintings, from which the music, as Ligeti explained in the liner notes, derives some of its unsettling power. In this performance, the finely articulated levels of darkness that engulf the listener as ghostly tide appear thanks to the players' extraordinary affinity with the music, with an astonishing and even overwhelming clarity. Another extraordinary performance is the Hamburg Concerto for horn and orchestra". (Zoran Minderovic, Allmusic).