Hamburg Concerto (German: Hamburgisches Konzert) for solo horn and chamber orchestra with four obbligato natural horns is one of György Ligeti's last works, composed in 1998–99 and revised in 2003.
The work was commissioned by the ZEIT-Foundation,[1] expressing the special wish that it should be associated with the City of Hamburg.[2] It is dedicated to the German horn player Marie Luise Neunecker, who premiered the original six movements with the Asko Ensemble in January 2001 in Hamburg (the place of the premiere being another special wish from the ZEIT-foundation).
The final revision is cast in seven movements:
György Ligeti wrote about his work:[3]
The name was chosen in analogy to Bach's Brandenburg Concertos (Brandenburgische Konzerte), Ligeti saw the naming as a dedication:
On the centenary of Ligeti's birth in 2023, The “Hamburgisches Konzert” by György Ligeti’'[4] was released, the most exhaustive and complete analysis on this work, written by the composer Alessio Elia and published by the German publisher Edition Impronta.
Elia, one of the leading scholars of Ligetian music,[5] takes us inside this last work by integrating different analytical approaches, from structural to spectral analysis, from aural analysis to the meticulous study of the manuscript and the notes kept at the Sacher Foundation in Basel among which Elia found two unpublished movements of the Concerto, not included in the final score, and published for the first time in this book together with all the preparatory sketches.[6]
A substantial chapter is dedicated to the numerous errors (over 300) present in the printed score, including the instrumental parts, and in the manuscript, which have irreparably compromised all the performances and recordings of the Concert to date.[6]
The complete revision of the score done by Alessio Elia, present in the book together with the presentation of possible solutions to the problematic points of the manuscript, resolved through the understanding of the compositional logic that underlies it, converged in the first revised performance of the Hamburg Concerto which took place at the Budapest Music Center on May 28, 2023, with the Concerto Budapest Ligeti Ensemble and Szabolcs Zempléni as solo horn.[7] The orchestra should have been conducted by Peter Eötvös, replaced due to indisposition by Gergely Vajda.[7]