CARTER Horn Concerto 1,2. Mad Regales 3. Tintinnabulation 4. Wind Rose. 2 Sound Fields 2. On Conversing with Paradise 5. Retracing. 6 Clarinet Quintet 7. Figment V 8. La Musique 9. Retracing III 10. Due Duetti 11. Figment III 12. Figment IV 13. Poems of Louis Zukovsky 14. Retracing II 15 • 1 Martin Owen (hn); Oliver Knussen, cond; 2 BBC SO; 3 BBC Singers; 4 Frank Epstein, cond; New England Conservatory Perc Ens; 5 Leigh McIrose (bar); Oliver Knussen, cond; Birmingham Contemporary Music Group; 6 Peter Kolkay (bn); 7 Charles Neidich (cl); Juilliard Str Qt; 8 Simon Boyar (mar); 9 Lucy Shelton (sop); 10 Jon Nelson (tr); 11 Rolf Schulte (vn); Fred Sherry (vc); 12 Donald Palma (db); 13 Hsin-Yun Huang (va); 14 Lucy Shelton (sop); Charles Neidich (cl); 15 William Purvis (hn) • BRIDGE 9314 A/B (2 CDs: 103:11 Text and Translation)


Elliott Carter, now in his 102nd year, is on a roll, and is a phenomenon. It doesn’t overstate the point to say that here we are witnessing a composer’s late-age musical flowering unprecedented in human history. This double-CD set includes 16 new works, all written since 2002 (when the composer was 94). Only one is from 2002, and one is from 2006; the remainder are 2007–09. And this collection doesn’t include everything written in this period. Do the math.


It would be remarkable enough if this were just a matter of quantity. But this is also music on an elevated level of expression, technique, and questing vision. While dense and concise in the manner of late Stravinsky, neither are they offhand bagatelles or doodlings. In fact (though I’ve said this too much already, I suspect), Carter’s “late-late-late” period is producing some of his finest work, distinguished by a combination of adventure, clarity, and total confidence. The impact of the almost two hours of music here is comparable to many hours more from some other composers.


With so many works in play, I think it’s a mistake to run through a critical exegesis of each piece. All of these will merit several listenings over time to parse out the details and get a better sense of their individual characters. Rather, I’m going to make a few global observations.


First, Carter has become more “experimental” as he’s aged. This is not so much in terms of taking up aesthetics alien to what he’s already committed himself to over the years. Rather, it has to do with meeting the challenge of ensembles and media he’s avoided in the past (for whatever reason). Thus, in the 2008 Tintinnabulation , we have a work for six percussionists, all with instruments of relative or no distinct pitch. (The piece is one of the few that doesn’t quite work for me, but how marvelous that the composer has jettisoned pitch as a factor to see what he’ll come up with!) Even more stunning are the 2007 Sound Fields for string orchestra and the 2008 Wind Rose for wind ensemble. These are slowly shifting, relatively static textures, cycling through different permutations of complex 12-note chords. They’re about as close to Morton Feldman as Carter will ever get, but of course they still sound utterly Carteresque in their harmonies.


Second, Carter’s vocal music has grown in ways I could not anticipate. After a series of neoclassic choral works in the 1940s, he left the voice as a medium until the 1970s, beginning with the song cycle on Elizabeth Bishop poems, A Mirror on Which to Dwell. I was impressed by the work, but successive cycles on Ashberry and Lowell struck me as overly cluttered, and not particularly grateful for the voice. But over time, Carter has refined his vocal practice. Now, having continued his pursuit of an A-list of modernist poets, I think he’s developed a technique that is eminently suited to these texts and their aesthetic. The vocal line still tends to be proclamative, a sort of modernist recitative, but it is stripped down, and more careful in prosody and projection of text. There’s less angularity and fewer wide leaps. And it doesn’t shy away from memorable and repeatable gesture; for example, the 2008 Pound setting On Conversing with Paradise culminates with a near-terrifying reiteration of the line “Pull down thy vanity!” The Zukovsky settings for soprano and clarinet (also 2008) are marvels of tone-painting, with the two principals distinctly characterized and each idiomatic. And the 2007 Mad Regales , three compact settings of Ashberry for a six-voice ensemble, is sparkling in its wit, invention, and beauty, a true new madrigal form. To take just one example, in the first text, each one of its eight lines is intoned by a different solo voice, against a slowly morphing, prismatic setting of the word “haiku” by the remaining five.


Third, Carter has created the most authoritative body of solo instrumental miniatures of anyone. Like Hindemith, he seems to be checking every orchestral instrument off his list (though these works have no accompaniment). The closest analog is the Berio Sequenzi , but Carter’s pieces are bagatelles in comparison. In one sense they’re slighter and more offhand. On the other, they tend to avoid the overambition and ponderousness that can weigh down some of Berio’s essays. Whatever the final judgment, they seem to be a great gift to performers, who reciprocate with gratitude, love, and programming. The Figments are a series that project consistent wit and fantasy. The Retracings are works derived quite literally from other pieces; for example, the first written, the 2002 bassoon work, is a largely unaltered transcription of the instrument’s solo from the 2000 ASKO Concerto . The notes suggest that these pieces pay tribute to Carter’s lesson learned from Nadia Boulanger, namely that every contrapuntal piece must be made up of individual lines, each of which could stand as an autonomous work.


Finally, Carter has not forsaken his trademark complexity and prolixity. The 2006 Horn Concerto is fast, intense, quicksilver. Though tiny, the same goes for the 2009 Due Duetti. The 2007 Clarinet Quintet has all of Carter’s trademark rhythmic devices of overlaid polytempos and metric modulations, but it also erupts in barrages of notes for its soloist that one can hardly believe. A thing that is astonishing about this work, and not only because of the age of its creator, is its sheer energy , the ability to write as many notes as needed to make its point, with no limit.


All performances are stunning, as usual for the Bridge series (this is Volume 8 in its Carter canon). A few of the larger works are taken from live performances, but under the sure hand of Oliver Knussen, their execution is impeccable and ambient noise negligible. It’s almost a cliché for me now, but this probably goes on the next Want List. Essential listening for anyone who wishes to be aware of one of the most remarkable musical enterprises currently still in process.


FANFARE: Robert Carl

The recording of Eliott Carter's "Boston Concerto" on this album was nominated for the 2007 Grammy Award for "Best Classical Contemporary Composition."

2 sided DVD disc.

This retrospective disc presents music composed by the late Elliott Carter over a period of more than 70 years. Unquestionably, the major work presented here is the late Charles Rosen’s performance of Carter’s Piano Concerto. Rosen, a great advocate of Carter’s music, had recorded most of Carter’s solo piano music over the course of his long career, though he never made a studio recording of Carter’s brilliant concerto. The release of this radio recording, featuring the superb Basel Sinfonietta, conducted by Joel Smirnoff, was one of Rosen’s last wishes. Volume 9 of Bridge’s ongoing Carter series opens with vocal works of Carter’s from the 30s and 40s, and proceeds to Steven Beck’s electrifying accounts of late solo piano music, and the Slowind Quintet’s performance of Carter’s quintet, Nine by Five, completed during the composer’s 101st year.

Classical Music

"The Bridge disc features the expert New York chamber group Speculum Musicae, and has an attractive rarity as opener, the Three Poems of Robert Frost, composed in 1942 when Carter was still an obedient, highly effective adherent of the 'open-air' Coplandesque style, but orchestrated with exuberant resourcefulness as recently as 1980...The account of Syringa (1978), the most complex and hermetic of the vocal works, with its superimposition of the soprano's Robert Ashbery poem on a collection of ancient Greek texts sung by the bass, may strike listeners (and especially attentive score-readers) as more careful than inspired. But as it proceeds it conveys the spirit of the work's intricate yet impassioned enquiry into the sources and spaces of creativity very well. Momentum is maintained, and the instrumental detail is clear and precise.

A Mirror on which to Dwell (1976) is less ambitious, though these settings of six poems by Elizabeth Bishop are marvellously refined in sonority the vocal line ranging from lingering lyricism to subtly-patterned declamation. Christine Schadeberg characterizes the texts alertly, especially the tricky syntax of ''O Breath''...

It is indeed gratifying to find record companies so prompt in acknowledging the importance of the Carter phenomenon, and with performances that, if not always ideal in every respect, are for the most part worthy of this extraordinary music."

-- Arnold Whittall, Gramophone [2/1990]

Elliott Carter’s two major string/piano duos – the Cello Sonata of 1948 and the 1974 Duo for violin and piano – here balance six of the short works for one, two or three players, tributes and playful arabesques, which have so unexpectedly thronged his latest decade of creativity. The result is an invaluable, kaleidoscopic introduction to one of the liveliest instrumental minds of our time. Fred Sherry and Charles Wuorinen fluently dispatch the four-movement Cello Sonata, the earliest and apparently most ‘traditional’ work in the collection. Yet this is where Carter first refined his ideas of metrical modulation, conflict and cross-purpose between players: mainstream Americana turning Cubist and many-dimensional. It’s also eloquent, even gabby, and volatile in the sense of forever aspiring to flight. In the single-movement, mosaic-like Duo the torrential discourse continues without any reference to traditional tonality or structure, but Rolf Schulte and Martin Goldray here turn in a far more amiable and beguiling version of this ragged, mercurial work than did Robert Mann and Christopher Oldfather two years ago on Sony. The short pieces, from the guitar study Changes (1983) to last year’s Gra for clarinet in homage to Lutoslawski, aren’t exactly miniatures, but relaxed fantasies of tone colour and technique: ‘tennis matches for the imagination’ is the striking image in David Schiff’s liner notes. Amiably and insistently they test the virtuosity of the individual instrumentalists, and the members of the Group for Contemporary Music rise joyfully to their challenges in nicely realistic, not over-bright sound.

-- Calum MacDonald, BBC Music Magazine

Recording information: Funkstudio, SWR Stuttgart.

This disc includes a conversation between Elliott Carter and Charles Rosen recorded in December 1996 at MasterSound Studios, Astoria, NYC (timing: 6'40").
This disc contains both DDD and ADD recordings.
"90+" was nominated for the 1999 Grammy Award for "Best Classical Contemporary Composition."
Elliot Carter has always been a composer for the cognoscenti, his music held to be well crafted and complicated. His early works are tonal and neo-classical, showing the influence of Stravinsky and teacher Nadia Boulanger. He progressed toward atonality and canonic textures, with extreme independence of voices his trademark. By the sixties when the proponents of post-serial complexity had reached the zenith of their powers in academic circles, Carter was often spoken of as America's leading composer.
The transitional Piano Sonata of 1947 is, with Ives' 'Concord Sonata' and Copland's 'Piano Variations,' an American keyboard classic. Like the latter work it is boldly declamatory and makes the most of the piano's metal with crashing sonorities and ringing harmonics. The 'Night Fantasies' of 1980 is wholly uncompromising, so difficult, one might add, that it took four pianists to commission it. There are no themes or motifs and relationships between rhythm and pitch groups are so long ranging and subtle that one could probably not discern them without careful study. Intellectual difficulty being pianist Charles Rosen's meat, he has no difficulty dispatching these works. The good analog recordings were made in Holland in 1982 and were originally released on Etcetera.
REVIEWS:
Village Voice (1/7/1998) - "...Rosen, a longtime Carter interpreter, finds the contrasts of touch and weight that pervade '90 Plus'...[in] 'Night Fantasies' [Rosen]emphasizes the [high-keyboard]dazzle...and surprising shifts...The Sonata...get[s] charming play..." Rating: A+
International Record Review (4/00) - "...As to Rosen's advocacy of [Carter's] nusic, it is both staggeringly precise and colouristically very sensitive. This recording deserves a place in the library of every musically literate person..."
Billboard (11/27/99, p.54) - Recommended

It is often said that Elliott Carter is the most European of all American composers. Without a doubt, the New York-born composer is one of the most interesting personalities of the New Music scene in the USA. His wide-ranging compositional output is complex, filled with philosophical and poetic allusions that range from orchestral and chamber music, solo instrumental and vocal pieces to his first opera, which he first wrote at the age of 90. He wrote his compositions from his head, without using any instruments, and many of his works were only heard at the premiere. For his 100th birthday, the Sonatina for oboe and harpsichord was premiered by Heinz Holliger and Peter Salomon and has now been recorded for the first time on GENUIN. With this recording, the Swiss Chamber Soloists honors the rich oeuvre of Elliot Carter – music that is full of elegance and transparency.

REVIEW:

This is a very pleasing recital of miscellaneous works from throughout Carter's career, with one significant discographic gain. This is the elegant and utterly charming extant movement of the 1947 Sonatina for Oboe and Harpsichord, a cheerful and genial piece full of neoclassical poise and melodious invention, and romantic warmth. The Études and Fantasy give the lie to the notion of Carter as an unapproachably complex composer. Expressive little character pieces, each addressing a different compositional and technical issue, they are remarkable for their clarity and charm. Carter was 103 when he wrote his concentrated little String Trio, featuring the viola in an unusually prominent rôle. Like most of the composer's late music it is brief and relatively easygoing, while still compressing many ideas into a brief span and exhibiting no diminution whatsoever of his imaginative or technical powers. The vocal pieces demonstrate Carter's natural sense of writing for the voice, reminding us that in his youth he had considerable experience as a choral tenor. The Zukovsky songs in particular are especially tender and expressive, the two "voices" duetting in affectionate dialogue. Nine by Five is the composer’s second wind quintet, written six decades after the neoclassical brass quintet. All but one of the players double their instruments, hence the title, producing a wide range of timbral possibilities in various combinations. The work has a strong pull towards tonality in some sections.

– Records Intenraional

Carter: Symphony of Three Orchestras - Varèse: Deserts, Equa

Prophets of the New is a series from Sony focusing on classic recordings of the 20th century's most revolutionary works. Elliott Carter's Variations for Orchestra was described by the Boston Globe as "an astounding imaginative feat of virtuoso orchestral writing," and his Double Concerto was hailed by Stravinsky as "a masterpiece."

This album received the 2008 Grammy Award for "Best Chamber Music Performance."

CARTER String Quartets: Nos. 2–4 • Pacifica Qrt • NAXOS 8.559363 (74:15)


In Fanfare 31:6, I wrote of the Pacifica Quartet’s release of Carter’s First and Fifth quartets: “A great release, which I can only hope is matched by the sequel.” Prayers are answered, though I have slight reservations this time, but based on the music rather than the performances.


Carter’s three middle quartets have distinct personalities, based on the fact that they are about “distinct personalities.” Specifically, the Second gives each instrument a prescribed character, and the piece becomes a chamber drama of individuals who interact in a variety of manners and situations. (Ives’s Second Quartet comes to mind as a predecessor, though Carter’s characterizations tend to be more subtle, concentrated, abstract, and involved.) The Third takes a similar idea, but now applies it to two duos (violin/cello and violin/viola), which have a separate set of movements that overlap with each other in a sort of macro-counterpoint. The Fourth is by far the most “classical”—indeed of the entire cycle, not just these three. While its first movement features a rhapsodic, almost wild violin cadenza against which the remaining instruments construct a continuous commentary, it becomes a far more coordinated texture of democratic equality between the voices as it progresses.


While I wrote with unrestrained enthusiasm about the music of Quartets No. 1 and 5, my reaction is more qualified here. No. 2 is many people’s favorite, and there’s no doubt it exudes great wit, virtuosity, and an idea of polyphony never really heard before. That said, I’ve always found the characterizations less perceptible than many, partly because Carter’s highly chromatic pitch language (despite the fact that the different instruments concentrate on different melodic intervals and rhythmic patterns) tends to homogenize the differences. Going back to Ives, I think more stylistic contrasts would make the point better. But I also know that’s anathema to Carter’s aesthetics.


No. 3 on the other hand, is the point where many folks gave up on the composer, but where I was (and still am) blown away. The Third is one of the greatest monuments of High Modernism. Yes, it’s unbelievably complex, but it has an intensity, breadth, and passion unlike almost anything else in the Carter output. One really hears the interaction, indeed the collision, between its worlds as they revolve around one another.


And then No. 4: I wrote earlier I hoped the Pacificas could convince me at last of its value, but while they push me to the edge, I still can’t make the leap. I do realize now that the first movement is one of those rare birds in Carter’s music, a piece based on the rigorous, almost obsessive development of a single motive. Likewise, the slow third movement and the increasingly fragmented alternation between outburst and silence of the concluding Presto have a memorable profile. But it still sounds forced, and I’m sorry to say, relatively empty to me in comparison to the other works in the cycle. I feel that Carter reached a point in the early 1970s where he understood his technique and was able to write large-scale works fluently, but he’d lost some of the reason and drive to do so. Several works that, again, people I know are passionate about, such as Night Fantasies for piano, Penthode for chamber orchestra, and this Quartet, seem to be going through the motions, but don’t reach the transcendent state one senses in other pieces. The good news, though, is that by the mid 1980s Carter began writing a series of brilliant miniatures (one can trace perhaps to the 1984 Riconoscenza for solo violin), which led him to his “late late” style, where a greater degree of clarity, concision, and wit has combined to produce more music of more delight than he ever produced before (we’re talking here about a composer working in the age range of 80–100!). The Fifth Quartet is one of the masterpieces of this period.


As for these performances, once again the Pacificas take the crown on several fronts. The Ardittis have the only other cycle (on Etcetera), but it does not include the Fifth. Also, the Pacificas have far more extensive indexing of movements, which allows one to follow Carter’s formal argument much more closely. Their interpretations are Olympian, yet also suitably driven, catching both the abstraction and expressionism of Carter’s music. To take just one example, their performance of the Fourth, which seems quite intense and fast, is seven minutes longer than the Arditti’s (27:00 vs. 20:00). Listening to the latter, their version of the first movement is the proverbial bat-out-of-hell, and while exhilarating, it sounds as though they’re in a hurry to get it over with. My only quibble with the Pacificas is that their performance of the Third, while staggering in its control and attention to detail, doesn’t deliver the sort of emotional wallop at its ending that I came to know from the Juilliard’s premiere LP recording on Columbia. (Boy, do I fear that dates me!)


But this is overall a triumph of adventurous and stunning music-making, both in the composer’s creation and the performers’ realization. My critique of Carter’s quartets doesn’t dim my overall admiration, or my sense that this is likely the greatest quartet cycle we’ve had since Bartók’s. Add in the budget price for both discs, and this is by far the best way to get a monument of its era, and the single best introduction to Carter’s world one could imagine.


FANFARE: Robert Carl