Ligeti’s String Quartet No. 2 has been an incredible discovery and a beautiful awakening to new musical possibilities. Before my encounter with this piece, my musical references were mainly based on serial/stochastic European and American works, which gave me the impression of listening to similar mediums of expression by the use of the same concepts and ideas.
However, in this piece Ligeti carefully plays with the pitches and rhythms in extraordinary ways. Textures are fine-tuned and gestures remarkably well developed. This work opened my ears to the power of gestures used as a striking main idea. To this day this piece remains by far one of my favourites among string quartet repertoire.
