A entertaining collection of recent Carter: a nonagenarian with plenty still to say

It’s most unusual for a contemporary work to have three recordings issued within a year or so: and while the piano piece Retrouvailles (2000) is not Carter at his most demanding – a tribute for Boulez’s 75th birthday, it lasts less than two minutes – Ursula Oppens’s performance comes at the end of one of the most substantial and well-varied Carter programmes on disc.

Pride of place goes to Syringa (1978), an intricate exploration of the relation between words and music in which Carter combines a poem about Orpheus by John Ashbery (for soprano) with extracts from ancient Greek texts (baritone). With a rich instrumental accompaniment in which the opposite extremes of guitar and trombone are prominent, Syringa offers fascinating insights into Carterian aesthetics.

The Quintet for Piano and Wind (1991) was written for Heinz Holliger and friends, but the Mode team has nothing to fear from the comparison. Oppens’s playing is as emotionally responsive as it is rhythmically precise, even though the recorded sound (generally adequate) does the piano few favours.

The other vocal work, Tempo e Tempi (1998) – settings of Italian texts for soprano and four instruments – is warmly moulded, if less clearly articulated than in the (unconducted) performance on Bridge sung by Susan Narucki. But, with the Arditti Quartet on hand to begin the programme with a gripping account of the far-from-casual Fragment II (1999), the CD has much of distinction to offer.

The DVD adds a performance of the Quintet with strings, and a 40-minute conversation, filmed in February 2000. Though this is probably less informative than separate interviews would have been, it contains some interesting exchanges, and Carter’s ability to summarise his objectives in clear and simple terms, as in his comments on Syringa, remains remarkable. The Quintet performance takes place with the camera in constant motion, and while the close focus (more on faces than fingers) and dramatic lighting match the intensity of the music, and underline the different performance styles – the Arditti team cool and collected, Oppens anxiously watchful – there’s a danger of being distracted from the tersely eventful music by the restlessness of the camera-work.

-- Arnold Whittall, Gramophone [Awards Issue 2004}