We all would like to think that our age is a golden one for the composition of classical music, but just the opposite is true.The period from 1950 to the present has been a frustratingly arid one; many of its treasures – the later works of Britten and Shostakovich, for example – were the logical culmination of careers begun before World War II. In our own time, arcane academicism, vacuous pedestrianism, or outright charlatanism has dominated in the classical arena. Ironically, a restive infatuation with the newest and latest has caused the bulk of contemporary music to sound oddly the same.

But there are exceptions. When the history of music is written 200 years from now, one of the acknowledged masters of the second half of the 20th century undoubtedly will be the Jewish Hungarian Gyorgy Ligeti. On Friday evening at Alice Tully Hall, the first of three concerts dedicated to Mr. Ligeti was given by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Conducting these concerts is the Dutchman Reinbert de Leeuw, whom Mr. Ligeti has chosen to supervise the recording of his entire output. Not since Stravinsky in the early 1960s has a composer been given the opportunity for such a comprehensive recorded survey.

Mr. de Leeuw had hoped to begin this program with Mr. Ligeti’s “100 Metronomes,” but Lincoln Center was unable to assemble so many of the now obsolete wooden timepieces (everything is digital now), and so chose instead to commence chronologically with a work from the 1940s titled “Old Hungarian Ballroom Dances.”

The piece combines the popular music of four Biedermeier composers of Budapest in a lively and typically Danubian manner, the melodies teetering on the edge of a precipice and tumbling down charmingly. The shtetl is never far away, and the entire piece sounds less like Bartok’s “Dance Suite” than Prokofiev’s “Overture on Hebrew Themes.”

After a stirring performance of the “Chamber Concerto for Thirteen Instrumentalists,” the chamber orchestra served as accompaniment to one of the best vocal performances on a New York stage in quite some time. Mr. Ligeti’s masterpiece is the opera “Le Grand Macabre,” and soprano Barbara Hannigan slipped out of the wings, bathed in pink lighting and dressed in purple leather, to offer the aria “Mysteries of the Macabre.”

Basically her role in the story is to save the world and look good doing it. The musical mastery comes from conquering Mr. Ligeti’s uncompromising syllabic content, breakneck tempo, and intervallic arduousness. This is singing as an extreme sport, and Ms. Hannigan was nothing short of electrifying.

Mr. Ligeti’s latest work is the “Hamburg Concerto for Horn and Chamber Orchestra,” which was presented with the talented hornist William Purvis playing on both valve and natural variants of his instrument. Backing him were four natural horns, an offstage valve horn, two basset horns (think Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto), and percussionists playing conga drums and rubbing cymbals with violin bows. What a spectacular sonic universe! The more familiar “Aventures/Nouvelles Aventures” rounded out the program.

Ted Williams was often the beneficiary of favorable calls from home-plate umpires. The reasoning was that the pitch must have been out of the strike zone if he did not swing at it. He was that good. Gyorgy Ligeti is like that.Although sometimes his music can sound demented or arbitrary, the listener can always trust this unique composer’s instincts. He is that good. Besides, if you stick with him, he tends to hit for an exceptionally high average.

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The Armenian people are mad for classical music.When I covered the season premiere of the National Chamber Orchestra in Yerevan in 2003, the concert was held at the Hakob Paronian State Musical Comedy Theatre because both Khachaturian Hall and the Brobdignagian (sounds Armenian, no?) opera house were under renovation in a country where the Soviets left little beyond architectural ruin. The concert was sold out, and the people, dressed to the nines although often threadbare, were extremely appreciative and knowledgeable. As I spent a little time in the country, I discovered that virtually every educated person there had grown up studying the piano.

The Russian-born Armenian pianist Stepan Simonian recently won the Virginia (Mrs. Fred) Waring piano competition and gave his New York recital debut on Thursday evening at the Weill Recital Hall. The results were decidedly mixed.

It would be hard to convince me that the root cause was not nervousness, but Mr. Simonian faltered in his opening work, Bach’s Toccata in E minor, BWV 914. Entrances were tentative, landings often inaccurate. Eschewing strict meter, the young man tried several times to take a breath and compose himself by sustaining a chord just a bit beyond the allotted time, but this device simply did not help significantly.

He made a very nice recovery in two pieces by George Perle. Remember that old Victor Borge routine where he would play a piece for a while and then stop, turn the music right side up, and continue to play, except now in the correct manner? These two short works, “Pantomime, Interlude and Fugue” and “Toccata,” were the mirror image of each other. The opening of the first was a series of hesitant line segments, like a Len Lye movie, followed by a meandering peregrination a la Schonberg Op. 11, No. 2. The second piece has the same pattern, only reversed.

Mr. Simonian performed these pieces quite accurately, aided immeasurably by using the printed music as his guide. I believe that the very exercise of this type of discipline calmed him, as the remainder of the program was considerably more successful than its opening. Mr. Simonian also had the good grace to pay oral tribute to Mr. Perle who, fresh from his recent 90th birthday celebration, was on hand for the accolades.

Perhaps the most revelatory piano demonstration I have ever heard was one wherein Sir Georg Solti played through the opening of Bartok’s “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle” just as it is written on the printed page. The music seemed stilted and sterile, not even resembling what we had learned to love. Then he played it with its Hungarian accents in place and it was mysterious, spectral, brilliant. He explained that if you didn’t speak Hungarian, you probably were never going to be an expert in this music.

“Pictures at an Exhibition” is such a piece for Russians.It is no accident that the best versions are always intoned by native Slavic speakers.Thus Mr. Simonian exhibited flashes of brilliance in this performance, dexterously traversing the “Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks” and plumbing the depths of the colors of “Bydlo” and “Catacombae.” He was a bit overwhelmed by the “Great Gate,” but aren’t we all?

The pleasant surprise on the program was a lovely account of Mikhail Glinka’s Nocturne in F minor, known as “La Separation.” Here we had Mr. Simonian the incipient poet. He shows quite a bit of promise and carries himself in a manner that indicates a superb work ethic.Time will tell.

At least I had a good seat. When I attended that evening in Armenia, my official hosts, with supreme generosity, treated me to the center seat in the front row, where I had little beyond a view of feet and an acoustical experience to match.That will teach me to ask the government for tickets.