Review Roundup: ALARM WILL SOUND at Zankel Hall

György Ligeti's life was filled with drama. He escaped Nazi extermination in a Jewish labor camp and eventually fled totalitarian oppression at the hands of the liberating Soviets in Hungary. His music's dense melodic webs and conflicting rhythms-along with a host of other experimental sounds, shapes, and forms-embody the dreams, fantasies, and nightmares of a life lived on the edge.

Alarm Will Sound, performed last Friday at Zankel Hall, tells Ligeti's incredible story through a blend of music and recorded sounds in a concert that resembles a live podcast.

Alarm Will Sound is a 20-member band committed to innovative performances and recordings of today's music, gaining a reputation for performing demanding works with energetic skill. The group's performances have been described as "equal parts exuberance, nonchalance, and virtuosity" by Financial Times and as "a triumph of ensemble playing" by the San Francisco Chronicle. The New York Times has said that Alarm Will Sound is "one of the most vital and original ensembles on the American music scene."

The versatility of Alarm Will Sound allows it to take on music from a wide variety of styles. Its repertoire ranges from the arch-modernist to the pop-influenced. Since its inception, Alarm Will Sound has been associated with composers at the forefront of contemporary music, premiering pieces by John Adams, Steve Reich, David Lang, Michael Gordon, Aaron Jay Kernis, Augusta Read Thomas, Derek Bermel, Benedict Mason, and Wolfgang Rihm. With many composer-performers in its ranks, the ensemble offers an unusual degree of insight into the creation and performance of new works.

Alarm Will Sound can be heard on nine recordings, including its most recent, Splitting Adams, in collaboration with Meet the Composer, a Peabody Award-winning podcast, as well as the premiere recording of Steve Reich's Radio Rewrite. The ensemble's genre-bending, critically acclaimed Acoustica features live-performance arrangements of music by electronica guru Aphex Twin. This unique project taps the diverse talents within the group, from the many composers who made arrangements of the original tracks, to the experimental approaches developed by the performers.

In a 2016 co-production with Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Alarm Will Sound presented the world premiere of the staged version of Donnacha Dennehy's The Hunger at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Touhill Performing Arts Center. In 2013-2014, Alarm Will Sound served as artists-in-residence at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Alarm Will Sound has appeared at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, (Le) Poisson Rouge, Miller Theatre at Columbia University, The Kitchen, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Kimmel Center, Library of Congress, Walker Art Center, and The Andy Warhol Museum, and as part of Cal Performances, Stanford Live, Duke Performances, and the Bang on a Can Marathon. International tours have taken the group to the Holland Festival, Kraków's Sacrum Profanum Festival, St. Petersburg's Pro Arte, and London's Barbican Centre, among others.

Let's see what the critics had to say!

Seth Colter Walls, NY Times: This performance was a marvel. In the first movement, Mr. Pierson made sure players articulated each madcap twist of rhythm not just with precision, but with a sense of glee. The way the bass and trombone savored droning tones in the second movement served as a reminder of what this group has learned from engaging with the Minimalist aesthetic. The soloist, John Orfe, sounded magnificent throughout, whether pummeling or delicately shaping Ligeti's emotionally varied piano motifs.

George Grella, NY Classical Review: While the concert part was as good as they come, the "podcast" was unsatisfying. The theme, "This Music Should Not Exist," came as a reaction to the truly remarkable circumstances of Ligeti's life and journey to the West. He survived via a chain of chance that was more extreme than anything out of Stanislaw Lem.

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