As you might suspect from the printed timings, Idil Biret’s recordings of Ligeti’s Etudes Books One and Two are noticeably slower than those by Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Fredrik Ullén. This works to her advantage in Cordes á Vide, where the polytextural, lyrical lines gain in resonance and harmonic tension (why, in the final bars, does Biret transpose the left hand up an octave?). Similarly, Biret’s broad basic tempo for Touches bloquées allows Ligeti’s specifically differentiated degrees of articulation to emerge more distinctly than in Aimard’s suaver, more generalized traversal. By contrast, she glides through Arc-en-ciel, giving a bracing lilt to the jazzy voicings.
In Fanfares, however, she doesn’t negotiate the scales passing back and forth between hands with Aimard’s adroitness, and she slows down as the textures thicken, losing momentum. Biret’s heavier touch in Vertige, L’escalier du diable, and Désorder yield labored results next to Aimard’s feathery fluidity, although her emphatically accented treatment of Der Zauberlehrling imparts an angular spin to the music’s phase shifting game plan.
From a purely virtuosic vantagepoint Aimard still rules the Ligeti Etude roost, yet there’s much to be said for Biret’s insightful musicianship. As a bonus, Biret proves that a human pianist can get through Coloana fara sfârsit as well as the mechanical player piano for which Ligeti originally scored the work, albeit at a far slower tempo than marked. The sonics are fine.
