Ligeti – Bernstein

From a now-out-of-print 1965 vinyl record, Leonard Bernstein Conducts Music of Our Time, Bernstein conducts the New York Philharmonic in György Ligeti's Atmosphères, a piece we've already discussed some time ago, but which is always exciting to hear again.

Bernstein's conducting is surprisingly clear, but what shocked me is that it's also surprisingly short. Only 6:30, compared to about 8:30 in other performances. A two-minute difference is a long time, so I pulled out the score. Calculating the total running time isn't easy because the tempo often changes from 40 to 60 to the quarter note, but a little later, it's a bit of a stretch. The math gives me a result of 8'34".

So I compared the audio files of Bernstein's and Nott's performances using Audacity, and this is the result. Nott above and Bernstein below (click to enlarge):

As you can see, Bernstein's performance is temporally compressed, as well as being dynamically higher. It seems to be about 25% faster. Below are the two performances.

Gyorgy Ligeti – Atmosphères

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