The second volume of the Sony Ligeti Edition concentrates on the composer's work for unaccompanied chorus. This volume contains mostly work written before his emigration to the West and offers perhaps the most complete view of Ligeti as an unwilling proponent of Socialist Realism. Most of the early music sets either actual Hungarian folk poetry or poetry in that style. Several arrangements of Hungarian folk songs are also included. For listeners used to the witty, cosmopolitan Ligeti of his later fame, the simplicity of the folk settings will come as something of a shock. Also shocking is that some of this music was considered too advanced to be performed in Communist Hungary. Into this mix is plunged the brilliant 'Lux Aterna' of 1966, which in this context might be from another planet. Similarly the 1982 'Drei Phantasien nach Freidrich Holderlin' and the 1983 Hungarian Etudes, the composer's first settings of Hungarian since 1956, present the listener with the fully formed composer with all his fiercely playful complexity. The performers are equally as adept at imitating sophisticated peasants as they are at mastering the brilliantly complex choral writing of the later works.