Although Gyorgy Ligeti is best known for his eerie, tonally ambiguous choral and orchestral writing (immortalized in 2001: A Space Odyssey), this collection of works for musical automata--player piano, barrel organ, and metronomes--includes some of his most astonishing music. The player piano pieces are an exhilarating, intensely physical roller-coaster ride through superhuman tempi and dynamic extremes--an intriguing marriage of artifice and human invention. While clearly indebted to the influence of Nancarrow, Ligeti's player piano works are more approachable than Nancarrow's rigorous etudes, revealing the sense of humor that distinguishes Ligeti from his more ponderous contemporaries. Likewise, the controversial prank piece Metronomes foreshadows the phasing experiments of Reich with its intricate cross-rhythms created by metronomes marking time simultaneously at different speeds. Perhaps most fascinating of all are Ligeti's compositions for computer-modified barrel organ--a hand-cranked, calliope-like instrument popular with itinerant musicians in the 1700s. --Dennis Rea