Elliott Carter: A Symphony of Three Orchestras; Var?se: Deserts; Ecuatorial; Hyperprism
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Music CD Cover
Composer: Elliott CarterComposer: Edgard Varese
Conductor: Pierre Boulez
Performer: Ensemble InterContemporain
Orchestra: French Radio Choir
Orchestra: New York Philharmonic
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1995-12-05
Music Label: Sony
Soundtracks:
- A Symphony of Three Orchestras
- Deserts
- Ecuatorial
- Hyperprism
Free Music Notes for Elliott Carter: A Symphony of Three Orchestras; Var?se: Deserts; Ecuatorial; Hyperprism
Free Music Review: Whispers antiphonal in azure swing.
Hit: 5 Stars
That's the final line of Hart Crane's enormously beautiful and difficult poem, The Bridge, which Elliot Carter chose as the inspiration for his equally beautiful Symphony for Three Orchestras. Carter was apparently fascinated by Crane's poetry, with its splintery imagery and jazz-age rhythms. I'm glad the notes alerted me, however, to the connections, since no words of the poem are incorporated in this instrumental panoply of sounds.
Hart Crane was my favorite poet when I was 20. I understood him then. Judging by what critics write of him today, I should say I misunderstood him then. The critics declare that Crane was lamenting the decline of American vision and promise into industrial soullessness. I heard Crane singing a paean of beauty - a vague paean, mind, but full of exultation. I hear a vibrant, exulting beauty in the music of Elliot Carter also. Perhaps I've got it all wrong. If so, don't disillusion me.
The Symphony OF Three Orchestras is a composition for three ensembles on one stage. The ensembles, chiefly melodic percussion, each play four movements of a structure at least suggestive of the traditional symphony, but each ensemble begins its movement while the previous ensemble is finishing, creating an overlapping kaleidoscopic sound. Carter declares that the listener is not expected to hear thematic development as such, but rather a fluid, human way of sounding, "like a crowd of people or waves on the sea." Well now, I suspect most people will first hear waves indeed, of beautiful noise without any clear structural intention. That may be enough to be pleasant listening. There is more to the music than rippling sounds, I promise. The deeper you listen, the more you'll hear, but don't try to write an essay about it. Like my last essay on Hart Crane, your attempt to verbalize your appreciation might come back to you with a C+.
The three pieces by Edgar Varese don't excite me as much. I'd be pleased enough by them in concert, but I wouldn't remember them long. Varese was cutting-edge in his use of electronic instruments, as Carter has been in his use of melodic percussion. Conductor Pierre Boulez acknowledges both Varese and Carter as influences on his work, so perhaps that's why they have been assembled together on this CD.
This is the only recording of Carter's Symphony of Three Orchestras, so it's hard to evaluate the skill of the performers. Hey, they sound like they mean to be playing what they play! I've performed similar music with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and other groups, and I can say candidly that interpretation begins with confidence in the notes. If anyone has that interpretational confidence, surely it would be Pierre Boulez.
Elliot Carter has a reputation as a composer's composer, a formidable intellectual sort of music-maker. Don't let it worry you. This CD is music for the senses.
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