GET CARTER! The Music of Elliot
Carter (I): Nicolas Hodges (piano), BBC Symphony Orchestra, Oliver
Knussen (conductor), (additionally a concert at the
Guildhall, a film by Frank Scheffer and a concert by
the BBC Singers at St Giles, Cripplegate), Barbican
Centre, London, 13.01.2006 (AO)
Festivals like this offer a rare opportunity to develop
a deeper understanding of a composer’s work. When so
much effort has gone into designing an immersion experience
for the audience, it would be a shame to simply précis
programme notes. What I’d like to do is perhaps explain
why Carter’s music works for me and how this festival
has enhanced it.
Carter, famously, is known as the composer who synthesized
Stravinsky’s neo classicism with Schoenberg’s free ranging
atonal ideas. His appeal, however, lies in his originality.
Form and rules are not as important as harmonic progressions,
spacing of intervals, textures and polyphonics. He
juxtaposes soloists with groups, highlights cells within
a whole. His work pulsates with movement, sounds “growing”
out of each other organically. As in a busy city, many
things happen at the same time independent of another:
behind every window on a skyscraper, there’s a story,
even if we can’t see it. Even our bodies hum with different
vital processes. The spirit of Carter’s music, for
me anyway, captures the vibration of life.
The first of the orchestral Occasions – Carter
wrote only one symphony – marks the 150th
anniversary of the State of Texas. Such music calls
normally for fanfares. Carter subverts convention with
warmth and humour, for here there are no less than 11
fanfare like passages reaching an exuberant climax,
but ending in an ambiguous blip. In Remembrance,
the second Occasion, a trombone solo, expressively
played by Helen Vollam, seemed to evoke a deeply resonant
human voice. Many of its notes stood alone, floating
in silence, like the slow tolling of a bell. The third
Occasion, Anniversary, reflects on Carter’s
wife, Helen. Two main themes progress in counterpoint
and complement. Carter frequently cites Proust and
Joyce, who wrote of time as seamless. The Carters
were together over fifty years, yet, as he wrote “only
our love hath no decay”.
Oliver Knussen was closely involved with the writing
of both Remembrance and Anniversary, and
of the idea of performing the three Occasions
as a group. Together they cover a range of emotion
and techniques, a kind of anti symphony. It was beautiful
to watch him conduct, for he did so with such elegance
and economy, the orchestra responding to every nuance.
In the Piano Concerto, Carter overturns the
idea of a concerto. The pianist isn’t there to decorate
what goes on in the orchestra or vice versa. Indeed,
he or she, (since Ursula Oppens was its great champion),
is thrown against it, an individual against the mass.
Even without knowing the political background to the
piece, it’s clear that it is a heartfelt exercise between
opposing forms. The piece starts with tentative steps
on piano, like a young animal learning to walk, then
gathers speed in the “scuttling” rhythm so characteristic
of the composer. It awakens the orchestra playing in
blocks of brutal sound. David Schiff describes passages
as the “lava flow” of strings, a “climactic dust storm”
and “poisonous gas clouds”, as if the orchestra represented
something profoundly elemental, deeper than merely Berlin
Wall imagery. Nicolas Hodges intuitively gauges when
to stretch his lines and when to pull them back, fencing
away from the orchestra, using wit instead of force.
His part is gloriously free and lyrical, flying across
the patterns in the orchestral line. He is not alone,
but supported by seven other soloists, three winds,
four strings, who also make forays of spirited adventure.
It’s fascinating to hear how the flute, for example
seems to make its counterparts in the orchestra essay
their own variations. The orchestra is by no means
monolithic, for there are multiple layers of texture,
as if its members were trying to refashion the concertino’s
inventiveness on their own terms. There’s a passage
in which a trumpet throws out a few short notes of exhilaration,
then falls back. It is remarkable seeing this Concerto
performed live, because the sense of movement is visible
as well as audible. So much is going on, so many congruent
and conflicting patterns and tempi, that watching the
to and fro helps make the piece even more vivid. Knussen
has the full measure of the piece, conducting piano,
concertino and orchestra separately. It’s no mean feat
when there are so many conflicting cross currents of
timing and pattern. Towards the end, there’s an explosion
of sound from the orchestra, and for a moment it seems
that the piano has been blasted away. I held my breath,
watching Knussen count out the silence, beat by beat.
Then the piano comes back, quietly, confidently, being
itself. It is a true coup de théâtre, totally original
although unassuming.
At ten that evening, the BBC Singers, conducted by
Stephen Cleobury gave a concert of Carter’s early vocal
work and of the madrigals that inspired him. For us
it’s hard to imagine a time when madrigals weren’t part
of the choral repertoire. When Carter was a young man,
seventy years ago, they were just coming back into circulation.
It was an interesting concert in that it demonstrated
the composer’s early interest in polyphony and intricate
patterns of sound. Straight after hearing the Piano
Concerto, it made me appreciate Carter’s adage that
the past, present and future are always related in a
continuum.
Anne Ozorio
