Sinfónico 21 by Ligeti, Mozart, Prokofiev, Od (2023/2023), Dirigent David Afkham, Auditorio Nacional de Musica, Madrid, Spain

Ligeti had occasionally used microtonal temperaments before Ramifications (1969), but only in this work did he use a fully microtonal spectrum, calling for half the musicians to tune their instruments a quarter tone higher than the other half. Moreover, on this occasion the "sound masses" took on an entirely new appearance, similar to an incandescent constellation of pulsations in space. The "Turkish" fashions that periodically dazzled Vienna throughout the eighteenth century were the hedonistic counterpart to the hardships suffered in equally intermittent armed conflicts. Of the five violin concertos that Mozart wrote in Salzburg in 1775, the last one had the virtue of having an energetic Finale infected with this peculiar exoticism. Premiered at the Moscow Conservatory in January 1945 – when the Red Army was advancing triumphantly towards Berlin – Prokofiev's fifth symphony inaugurated the composer's final symphonic trilogy. Away from the avant-garde brutalism of his three previous symphonies, the work transfers the grandeur of his opera War and Peace to the symphonic sphere, in whose composition he had been immersed for three years.