As György Ligeti’s Piano Etudes increase their foothold in the repertoire, more and more young pianists rise to their formidable musical and technical challenges in concert and on disc, including Toros Can. There’s no question that this talented new-music specialist solidly commands Ligeti’s polytextures and complex rhythms throughout Book Two’s knottier studies. He also responds well to the lyric beauty and subtle phrase displacements characterizing Book One’s Cordes à vide and the unfinished Book Three’s White on White. In Book One’s Fanfares, on the other hand, Can doesn’t balance the running scales against the double-note chords with the adroit control and timbral refinement you get from Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Fredrik Ullen, and Volker Banfield (the latter to whom this particular etude is dedicated).
The main advantage this disc has over the competition is that it is the only one (so far) to gather all 17 extant Ligeti Etudes on one disc. Sonically speaking, it falls far short of BIS and Sony’s outstanding engineering for Ullen and Aimard respectively, and Can’s rather shrill, colorless Yamaha piano doesn’t help matters. Ullen’s Ligeti Etudes are spread across several discs in his ongoing cycle devoted to the composer’s keyboard works, while Aimard’s 1996 Sony recording includes all 15 etudes written up until that time. While Can’s Ligeti ultimately yields to either Ullen or Aimard’s finer-grained mastery, he’s certainly a pianist worth watching.
