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Elliot CARTER (b. 1908) 100th Anniversary Release CD: Mosaic (2005) [11.56]; Dialogues (2004)
[14.14]
New Music Concerts
Ensemble/Robert Aitkin
rec. live, Glenn Gould Studio, Toronto, 28 May 2006 Scrivo in vento for solo flute (1991) [5.32]; Enchanted Preludes for
flute and cello (1988) [6.00]
Robert Aitken (flute) Figment 1 for cello solo (1994) [6.16]; Figment 2 -Remembering Mr.Ives for
cello solo (2001) [3.58]
David Hetherington (cello) Riconoscenza per Goffredo Petrassi (1984) [5.51] for violin solo; Rhapsodic
Ramblings (1999) [3.14] for violin solo
Fujiko Imajishi (violin) Gra for solo clarinet (1993) [4.18]
Max Christie (clarinet) Steep Steps (2001) for bass clarinet [2.40]
Virgil Blackwell (bass clarinet)
rec. Church of St.George the Martyr, Toronto Canada, May, October 2006
DVD: Interview
with Robert Aitken [22.06)
Live performance of Mosaic [12.48] and Dialogues [15.13] NAXOS 8.559614 [64.50]
& 2.110257 [51.07]
This release not only comes with ten recent works, most of
them quite short, but also a DVD making it even better value
for money.
Neither I nor anyone I asked could think of another composer
who, in the entire history of music was still so active musically
and intellectually as Elliot Carter at the age of 100. These
pieces are challenging for performers and audiences alike and
yet they reap astonishing rewards.
I found it informative and useful first to watch the interview
conducted in front of an enthusiastic audience in May 2006 on
the DVD. It is conducted by Robert Aitken, the Canadian flautist
and director of the New Music Concerts Ensemble. Afterwards I
watched the live performance of ‘Mosaic’ before hearing
it as track 1 of the CD. I was reminded of something I learned
when I attended Carter’s 90th birthday concert at the Barbican
and that is the extraordinary visceral quality of the music.
Visually it is compelling. The effect of the swift movement of
sound across the ensemble and speedy movement of bows and hands
flashing across the stage is like nothing else I know.
‘Mosaic’ features the harp and is dedicated to the late
great harpist of over fifty years ago Carlo Salzedo whom Carter
knew and who made remarkable discoveries in the expansion of
harp techniques. Carter admits in the interview something which
all composers would agree with, that first the guitar and then
the harp are the hardest instruments to write for. The utterly
amazing Erica Goodman gets her hands and her feet around the
strings and pedals fluently and effortlessly. She comes in for
especial thanks from the composer who set her such challenges.
It is a remarkable piece. Carter admits that its form is very
free, rather like a fantasy, unique really. It’s a structure
that makes sense especially as it gathers towards its climax
one minute from the end and then offers its throw-away final
bars. The studio recording on CD 1 moves along with a little
more focus and clarity.
The longest work represented both on the CD and in a live performance
on the DVD is ‘Dialogues’, completed in 2004. The
title tells us that the ideas, sometimes melodies - often just
chords - are passed between the piano and ensemble in a chamber
music type conversation despite the fact that this is for an
ensemble of sixteen musicians plus piano. Played in a single
span it is possible to decipher a clear form. I hear an agitated
opening movement beginning with a cor anglais solo which collapses
into a slow section marked by dramatic crescendo chords in strings
punctuated by piano. Then follows a brief, airy scherzo ending
with a longer finale which mixes the tempi, brings back the cor
anglais motif and ends with a whimsical coda. On the DVD the
recorded balance is not that good and because the redoubtable
David Swann has the piano lid up you not only cannot hear the
instruments behind too well, but comically you can just see Robert
Aitkin’s shock of white hair bobbing up and down behind
it. The CD version is more incisive but Nicholas Hodges, the
dedicatee when recording it for Bridge (9184) knocks a further
minute off its duration resulting in a virtuoso but frenetic
display in which certain passages do not have time to breathe.
This is to me, the most Schoenbergian - a composer Carter quotes
in the interview - of Carter scores.
Works for solo flute are not that common. The DVD touches on
Aitkin’s performance of ‘Scrivo in vento’ which
was stimulated by a sonnet of Petrarch and which, by coincidence
received its first performance on the poet’s birthday.
Its use of the lowest register at the start reminded me of Debussy
and Varèse. Very soon extremes of register become significant,
so much that the music becomes a dialogue of registers played
by one person. I wonder though if the music’s rhythmic
difficulties will take it out of the ability range of those who
at present will happily tackle Debussy’s ‘Syrinx’ and
Varèse’s ‘Density’. Perhaps … we
shall see.
The flute features again in a duo with cello. It’s a work
dating from 1988. ‘Enchanted Preludes’ uses a line
of Wallace Stevens “….the enchanted place/in which
the enchanted preludes have their place”. How to find the
words to describe this or any music I don’t know. But I
can say that it is crepuscular, skittish and yet the counterpoint
is sumptuous and impassioned as it reaches its inevitable climax
before collapsing. Quite extraordinary.
The other works on the CD all played so magnificently and with
such commitment are for solo instruments which Carter has made
a specialty of in recent years. Some are available elsewhere
and sometimes I prefer the earlier version for example the first
of the two ‘Figments’ for solo cello recorded by
Rohan de Saram in 1994 (also on Auvidis Montaigne 782091). A
seemingly argumentative piece as it flirts between contrasting
registers. It’s apt that the second Figment should be subtitled ‘Remembering
Mr.Ives’ as it was he who much encouraged the young Carter
to continue with compositional studies. I rather prefer it, possibly
as it appears a little more tonal with its quotes from Ives’s ‘Concord
Sonata’ and ‘Halloween’. Needless to say both
are brilliantly mastered by David Hetherington.
You might be tempted to think the remaining pieces on this disc
as just chippings from the Carter workshop but although each
is short in terms of length each does contain as it were a history,
and is in microcosm the entire Carter experience. The first of
the two works for solo violin ‘Riconoscenza’ was
written for Petrassi’s 80th birthday and ‘Rhapsodic
Musings’ is dedicated to Robert Mann for his “extraordinary,
devoted advocacy to contemporary music”. Both pieces use
ideas, as do so many Carter works, which on one hand can be aggressive
and harsh, against those which are quiet and reconciliatory.
The former piece is also quite elegiac in character. The latter
seems as if it will a ternary form structure beginning aggressively
fading into a quite passage of long held notes and double-stoppings
and then reverting to aggressive patterns but Carter surprises
us by inserting almost randomly quiet ones into the final seconds
so that expectations are always surprised. Staggering well played
by Fujiko Imajishi.
‘Gra’ is a scherzo-like concept, meaning ‘play’ in
Polish and dedicated on his 80th birthday to Lutoslawski
with whom Carter spent he says, many a happy hour, Max Christie
captures the character of the piece brilliantly. Equally joyous
and good spirited is the very brief ‘Steep Steps’ for
bass clarinet and played by its brilliant dedicatee Virgil Blackwell.
This double album which comes with an anonymous essay, notes
on each work by the composer and photos and biographies of the
performers, offers amazing value and is testimony to an astonishing
musical personality and to those who have dedicated so many hours
to working with him and offering to us the fruits of their study.
This music is consistent in style and full of integrity and even
if you find it a difficult to grasp that is a rare commodity
in much of the music of our time.
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