Études Pour Piano

• Starting in 1985 and spanning over a decade, Ligeti wrote 18 etudes for piano, compiled into three books.¹ With these pieces, Ligeti followed in the footsteps of Chopin and Liszt by creating a series of piano studies for the late 20th Century.
• The etudes were inspired by a wide variety of musical and extramusical sources, including studies for player piano by Conlon Nancarrow, the polyrhythmic music of the Aka people of the Central African Republic and Congo, and the drawings of Dutch artist M. C. Escher.²

The series of études for piano that ran through the last 20 years of his life like a diary, as the mazurkas of Chopin do, amount almost to a reinvention of the piano. They are the most dazzling piano pieces of our time, in some of which you feel the composer had glimpsed sources of the instrument’s sonority no one before had exploited. Never mind ideas about music, though, it was the music itself that mattered. His goal was always to create something new from within the sound: that made him new, but always the same.

Stephen Plaistow, Obituary for Ligeti in The Guardian

• Book 1 (1985)
  • 1. Désordre
  • 2. Cordes vides
  • 3. Touches bloquées
  • 4. Fanfares
  • 5. Arc-en-ciel
  • 6. Automne à Varsovie
• Book 2 (1988-94)
  • 7. Galamb borong [Melancholy Dove]
  • 8. Fém [Metal]
  • 9. Vertige
  • 10. Der Zauberlehring
  • 11. En suspens
  • 12. Entrelacs
  • 13. L’escalier du diable
  • 14. Coloana infinita
• Book 3 (1995-2001)
  • 15. White on White
  • 16. Pour Irina
  • 17. A bout de souffle
  • 18. Canon³

1. Paul Griffiths, “Ligeti, György,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed October 31, 2022, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000016642.
2. Mario-Felix Vogt, Notes in accompanying booklet, Yuja Wang: The Berlin Recital performed by Yuja Wang, Deutsche Grammophon B0029339, 2018, compact disc.
3. Ibid.