The Music of Elliott Carter, Volume Five - Nine Compositions (1994-2002)
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Music CD Cover
Performer: Peter KolkayPerformer: Fred Sherry
Performer: Ayako Oshima
Performer: Charles Neidich
Performer: Virgil Blackwell
Composer: Elliott Carter
Performer: Speculum Musicae
Performer: Charles Rosen
Performer: Jacob Greenberg
Performer: Tony Arnold
Performer: Maureen Gallagher
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2002-06-01
Music Label: Bridge
Soundtracks:
- Steep Steps
- Two Diversions
- Two Diversions
- Oboe Quartet
- Figment No. 2 (Remembering Mr. Ives)
- Au Quai
- Of Challenge and of Love
- Of Challenge and of Love
- Of Challenge and of Love
- Of Challenge and of Love
- Of Challenge and of Love
- Figment No. 1
- Retrouvailles
- Hiyoku
Free Music Notes for The Music of Elliott Carter, Volume Five - Nine Compositions (1994-2002)
Free Music Review: Carter continues to impress
Hit: 4 Stars
This disc, containing seven short works and two longer ones dating from Carter's late eighties and early nineties, continues Bridge's invaluable series of recordings of works by this modern American master. As with all Bridge's recordings, the performers are almost always musicians with a long history of performing Carter's music (here including the group Speculum Musicae, the cellist Fred Sherry and the pianist Charles Rosen), and this certainly helps to give the performances an authoritative air.
The disc starts with a bang--Carter's bass clarinet solo Steep Steps (so titled because of the importance of leaps of a twelfth in the composition). This is a vigorous and highly enjoyable work that provides an ideal disc opener. More dry are the Two Diversions, two pieces for the advanced piano student. These two works complement each other well; the first simpler, the second rhythmically complex.
The Oboe Quartet is one of Carter's more important recent scores. Written in a single multi-section movement, it alternates between tutti passages and duets for pairs of instruments, and demonstrates (as does much of Carter's recent music) that a strictly atonal style need not reduce a composer's capacity for lyricism. If I'm not sure that Speculum Musicae's performance here quite matches the intensity of Holliger and friends on ECM, this is still a fine reading of a significant work.
The disc then returns to a couple of miniatures. Figment No 2 for solo cello is one of a series of works in which Carter pays homage to musical figures important to him when he was younger, and though there are no obvious stylistic references to Ives, the work does include fragmentary quotations and hints of hymnic writing. Au Quai, by contrast, is a tribute to a composer and conductor who has done so much for Carter's own music--Oliver Knussen, on his 50th birthday. Written for the unusual combination of viola and bassoon, this is a delightful, charming miniature with a wonderfully sense of timing.
Returning to major works, once again, Of Challenge and of Love is one of Carter's many recent song cycles (though the only mature work of his for voice and piano). A setting of five poems by John Hollander, this builds to an expressive climax in the lengthy fourth poem, Quatrains from Harp Lake, before the almost anticlimactic close, End of a Chapter. Having only heard this work though Lucy Shelton's premiere recording on Koch, I found much more warmth in it in this reading, with the fine Tony Arnold the soprano soloist, though I don't think it will ever rank amongst my favourite late Carter works.
The disc ends with three more miniatures. Figment No 1 for solo cello is one of Carter's finest short works, ranging over the whole expressive gamut despite being based entirely on one short idea. Retrouvailles is a brief and comparatively simple (for Carter, at least) study for piano, written for Pierre Boulez's 75th birthday, while Hiyoku, a duet for two clarinets, effectively explores the contrast between the two instruments playing similar and different material.
This is another impressive release in Bridge's Carter series. Lovers of the composer's music will not hesitate to snap it up.
The Music of Elliott Carter, Volume Five - Nine Compositions (1994-2002) Poster
Steep Steps* (2001) Virgil Blackwell, bass clarinet; Two Diversions (1999) Charles Rosen, piano; Oboe Quartet* (2001) Speculum Musicae; Figment No. 2 "Remembering Mr. Ives"* (2001) Fred Sherry, cello; Au Quai* (2002) Maureen Gallagher, viola, Peter Kolkay, bassoon; Of Challenge and of Love (1994) Tony Arnold, soprano; Jacob Greenberg, piano; Figment No. 1 (1994) Fred Sherry, cello; Retrouvailles (2000) Charles Rosen, piano; Hiyoku* (2001) Charles Neidich and Ayako Oshima, clarinets*Premiere recording
Volume Five of Bridge's ongoing Elliott Carter series contains five premiere recordings, including Carter's bracing Oboe Quartet of 2001. Performed by many of the leading Carter advocates of our time, this recording is a must for those interested in keeping up with the undimmed imagination and constant creative impulse of this American master, now well into his tenth decade. Also featured on this CD is a new recording of Carter's song cycle Of Challenge and of Love, performed by the brilliant young American soprano Tony Arnold, the recent first prize winner of the Gaudeamus International competition for interpreters of contemporary music. Rounding out this CD are a series of instrumental miniatures played by dedicatees Virgil Blackwell, Charles Neidich, Ayako Oshima and Fred Sherry. In addition, the pianist Charles Rosen adds on to his earlier (almost) "Complete Piano Music of Carter" CD (BRIDGE 9090) with the Two Diversions, and Retrouvailles.
Volume one: BRIDGE 9014
Volume two: BRIDGE 9044
Volume three: BRIDGE 9090 (Grammy nomination)
Volume four: BRIDGE 9111 (Grammy nomination)
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