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Recordings

Variations for Orchestra (1954-5, corr. ed. 1966) 
(with music by Babbitt, Cage, Schuller) 
Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Levine 
Deutsche Grammophon CD 431 698-2  

Partita 
(with music by Berio and Takemitsu) 
Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Barenboim  
Teldec CD 4509-99596-2  

Orchestral Music 
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1964-5)* 
Concerto for Orchestra (1969) 
Three Occasions for Orchestra (1986-9) 
SWF Symphony Orchestra/Gielen/Oppens(*)  
Arte Nova CD 74321 27773 2  
Not the clearest of recordings (the Concerto for Orchestra in particular suffers, especially in comparison with the Knussen disk), but how good to have a performance of the Piano Concerto by one of it's leading exponents! On a budget label too. The Piano Concerto is also on compilation disk - details tbc. 

Orchestral Music  
Three Occasions for Orchestra (1986-9) 
Violin Concerto (1990)* 
Concerto for Orchestra (1969) 
London Sinfonietta/Knussen/Bohn(*)  
Virgin Classics CD VC 7 91503-2 
Stunning performance and recording of the Concerto for Orchestra, coupled with more recent orchestral music. Grammy award winner in 1994. 

The Works for String Quartet 
Quartets 1-4, Elegy 
Arditti String Quartet 
Etcetera CD KTC 1065 (vol 1) 1066 (vol 2) 
Committed performances, captured in close detail. I still prefer the poetry of the Composers' Quartet versions of nos 1 and 2. Fine booklet notes :-) 

In Sleep, In Thunder (1981)(1) - Triple Duo (1982)(2) 
London Sinfonietta/Knussen/Hill(1), The Fires of London(2) 
Wergo CD WER 6278-2 

Eight Compositions (1948-1993) 
Gra (clarinet) (1993)(1) 
Enchanted Preludes (flute, cello)(1988)(2) 
Duo for Violin and Piano (1974)(3) 
Scrivo in Vento (flute)(1991)(4) 
Changes (guitar)(1983)(5) 
Con Legerezza Pensosa (clarinet, violin, cello)(1990)(6) 
Riconoscenza per Goffredo Petrassi (violin)(1984)(7) 
Sonata for Violoncello and Piano (1948)(8) 
The Group fort Contemporary Music: Neidich(1,6), Sollberger(2,4), Sherry(2,6,8), Schulte(3,6,7), Goldray(3), Starobin(5), Wuorinen(8) 
Bridge CD BCD 9044 
Impassioned playing, particularly by violinist Schulte of the Duo and Riconoscenza. A very different approach to Paul Zukovsky's original Nonesuch recording, which by comparison is glacial in its detachment. David Starobin's second recording of Changes - the playing on the earlier record is cleaner, this performance seems (slightly) less rushed. Overall, an essential compilation of the recent miniatures, with the Duo and Sonata providing a reminder that Carter is a master of large form: marred only by a somewhat less-than-clear recording of the Cello Sonata. 

The Complete Music for Piano 
90+ (1994) 
Piano Sonata (1945-6, rev. 1982) 
Night Fantasies (1980) 
Charles Rosen 
Bridge CD 9090 
Reissue of Etcetera recordings of the Sonata and Night Fantasies, with only the somewhat intractible 90+ (a birthday tribute to Goffredo Petrassi) newly recorded. The disk also includes a short conversation between Carter and Rosen. 

Double Concerto 
Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello and Harpsichord (1) 
Cello Sonata (2) 
Double Concerto for Harpsichord and Piano with Two Chamner Orchestras (3) 
Sollberger(1), Kuskin(1), Sherry(1), Jacobs(1,2,3), Krosnik(2), Kalish(3), The contemporary Chamber Ensemble cond. Weisberg (3) 
Electra Nonesuch 79183-2 
Welcome reissues of classic Nonesuch recordings. The original LP with the Double Concerto kindled my interest in the composer, the digital transfer although AAD is exceptional. All three works are given performances which balance clarity and thoughtfulness with exuberant virtuosity. 

Of Challenge and Love 
Complete Songs for Voice and Piano by Igor Stravinsky and Elliott Carter 
  Three Poems of Robert Frost 
  Warble for Lilac-Time 
  Voyage 
  Of Challenge and Love 
Lucy Shelton (Soprano), John Constable 
Koch 3-7425-2-H1 

Chamber Music  
5th String Quartet (1) 
90+ (2) 
Sonata for Cello and Piano (3) 
Figment for Cello alone (4) 
Duo for Violin and Piano (5) 
Fragment for String Quartet (6) 
Arditti String Quartet (1,6), Ursula Oppens (2,3,5), Rohan de Saram (3,4), Irvine Arditti (5) 
Auvidis Montaigne MO 782091 
From performers long associated with Carter's music, the first recordings of the fifth quartet, Figment and Fragment, with authoritative readings of the Cello Sonata and Duo too. The composer is well served by pianists, and it is instructive to compare Oppens' compellingly poetic performance of 90+ with Rosen's less tractable version noted above. The same immediacy of response to the fantasy of Carter's invention characterises all the performances here: this is an essential disk. 

Symphonia/Clarinet Concerto  
Clarinet Concerto (1) 
Symphonia: sum fluxae pretium spei (2) 
London Sinfonietta (1), Michael Collins (1), BBC Symphony Orchestra (2), Oliver Knussen (1,2) 
Deutsche Grammophon 495 660-2 
A superlative performance and recording of the major work of Carter's recent years, the three-movement orchestral cycle Symphonia. The opening Partita is jazzily unpredictable, the concluding Allegro scorrevole breathaking in its lightness, with the recording capturing every detail. Even the inscrutable central movement, Adagio tenebroso, starts to yield its secrets.

Chamber Music for Winds  
Wind Quintet
Esprit rude/esprit doux I
Eight Etudes and a Fantasy
Enchanted Preludes
Sonata for flute, oboe, cello and harpsichord
Ensemble Contrasts
CPO 999 453-2 
Lively and disciplined performances of an attractive selection of pieces, clearly recorded. The playing in the wind quintet perhaps a little too disciplined, but it is good to have this along with the Etudes and Fantasy and Sonata charting Carter's abstraction of neoclassicism from 1948 to 1952. The Sonata is played on a Pleyel harpsichord dating from 1930 (there is a somewhat scary photograph of the instrument in the booklet)

The Music of Elliott Carter, volume 4  
Shard (1)
Liumen (2)
Tempo e Tempi (3)
Eight Pieces for Four Timpani (4)
David Starobin (1), Speculum Musicae (2,3), Susan Narucki (3), Daniel Druckman (4)
Bridge 9111 
The Bridge project continues with three recent pieces and a rarity. Starobin makes light of Shard's fevered virtuosity (though I can imagine other players making more of the lyrical side of the piece) and contributes to the glittering instrumental play of Liumen (scored for trumpet, trombone, harp, mandolin, guitar and vibraphone). Tempo e Tempi is a cycle of eight songs for soprano and four instruments: the absence of a harmony instrument focusses attention on the lines in music of great transparency. At last, too, a complete recording of the timpani pieces, although in comparison to the rest of the disk this is of documentary rather than musical interest.

What Next? / ASKO Concerto  
What Next? (1)
ASKO Concerto (2)
Anderson/Leonard/Summers/Joyner/Elzinga/Hoogeveen(1), Netherlands RSO/Eotvos(1,2)
ECM 1817 (2003) 
Carter's late foray into the operatic is a forty-minute absurdist diversion, the forty short sections of Paul Griffith's oblique libretto written to provide ample opportunity for quick-fire changes of ensemble and characterisation. The opera explores a single situation - in the aftermath of an accident which occurs as the work starts, six characters try to make sense of their predicament, their varied recollections (which may or may not be correct) of the past and their mutual relationships filtered through their own disparate psychologies. The dramatic pace quickens as the piece progresses, reaching a crisis with the arrival of two workmen who appear oblivious to the cast's attempts to communicate; on their departure, confusion reigns again as the cast depart and the curtain comes down.

Though it's tempting not to want to make too much of the libretto, it must be said that Carter's music is the star of the show. This is a pity: Syringa (1978) showed how powerfully Carter could respond to a text which, though even more oblique in its reference, elaborates an urgent poetic message. As it is, the music is vivid and inventive, and the orchestral playing under Eotvos as richly characterised as the singing of the six soloists.

The ASKO Concerto (composed in 2000) could be Carter's Dumbarton Oaks, its single movement ritornello form framing duos, trios a quintet and a solo which together feature all the instruments of the ensemble.

The Music of Elliott Carter, volume 5  
Steep Steps (1)
Two Diversions (2)
Oboe Quartet (3)
Figment no. 2 (Remembering Mr Ives) (4)
Au Quai (5)
Of Challenge and of Love (6)
Figment no 1 (7)
Retrouvailles (8)
Hiyoku (9)
Virgil Blackwell (1), Charles Rosen (2,8), Specuum Musicae (3), Fred Sherry (4,7), Maureen Gallagher/Peter Kolkay (5), Tony Arnold/Jacob Greenberg(6), Charles Neidich/Ayoko Oshima(9)
Bridge 9128 (2003) 
Another indispensible collection of recent works - the setting of John Hollander's texts in the cycle Of Challenge and of Love dating from 1994, all the others from 1999-2002. The song-cycle recieves (to my ears) a more sensitive performance than on the earlier disk with Lucy Shelton and John Constable, with a more natural recorded balance of voice and piano, but it still strikes me as a work which reveals its secrets gradually. The 2001 Oboe Quartet is the other substantial piece on this disk: as in the cycle Tempo e Tempi recorded on the previous Bridge disk, the lack of a harmonic instrument throws the lines of the piece into sharp relief - this is a fine performance, urgent and purposeful. The other works, miniatures and celebratory offerings, are performed with flair and invention.

The Music of Elliott Carter, volume 7  
Dialogues (1)
Boston Concerto (2)
Cello Concerto(3)
ASKO Concerto(4)
Oliver Knussen (1-4), London Sinfonietta (1), BBC Symphony Orchestra (2,3), Asko Ensemble (4), Nicolas Hodges (1), Fred Sherry (3),
Bridge 9184 (2005) 
Astonishingly, the oldest work on this disk, the ASKO Concerto, dates from 2000, written when Carter was 92. Strikingly, too, the ASKO Concerto is the slightest of the four works - the three subsequent pieces (the Cello Concerto of 2001, the Boston Concerto of 2002 and the Dialogues of 2004) are all large-scale pieces (belied by the Dialogue's mere thirteen-odd minutes), and show a composer in his tenth decade still advancing in technique, in a vision of musical continuity and contrast, and in his use of varied instrumental bodies to colour and shape a compelling musical narrative.

The musical continuity of the three earlier pieces grows from the ritornello form of the ASKO concerto, in the Cello concerto supporting a soloist at times lyrical, at times impulsive, and in the Boston Concerto articulated by "rain music", a luminous pattering of string pizzicatos, suggested by the opening lines of William Carlos Williams' poem "Rain": As the rain falls/So does/your love. Carter's marshalling of large orchestral forces here and in the Cello Concerto is masterful in its transparency and variety. Dialogues, by contrast, abandons a regular formal organisation in favour of a fluid, conversational plan that sees the piano and chamber orchestra respond to each other's statements in many ways: as if the style of the instrumental miniatures of the 80s and 90s has suddenly expanded into a language which by and of itself supports a larger and more structural narrative.

And needless to say, great performances, and a vivid recording. Essential.

This site © 1998 David Harvey. All rights reserved 
Page created 3 January 1998 
Last modified 12 February 2006