Der Postillon (a German version of The Onion) reports that a school orchestra in Coburg in a desperate attempt to tune their instruments, accidentally gave a complete performance of Ligeti's San Francisco Polyphony.
As Der Postillon neglected to provide a recording, here's a partial one by the Berlin Philharmonic.
The work was commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony in 1973, the year after Ligeti taught at Stanford, and last reprised here in 2008. An excerpt from the program:
The piece opens with a dense texture made up of many individual melodic lines. In contrast to the composer's early pieces, which used the shimmering moving clusters of what Ligeti calls "micropolyphony," this composition uses much wider spacing and aims for "drier, sharper, and more graphic ... melodic lines" that are more "translucent." The piece is characterized by the subtle technique of timbre modulation achieved through the constant reorchestration of dynamic material. reprised At the beginning, certain melodies stand out from a group becuase they are played by several instruments in unison. The number of voices is very gradually reduced, producing an unusual ascending-pitch illusion which leaves only the higher woodwinds playing.