Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Carter's absurdist opera in one act, January 25, 2004
Happy Birthday Elliot Carter! This ECM disc was released to coincide with Carter's recent 95th birthday. The opera, "What Next?", was composed in 1997, commissioned by Daniel Barenboim for his Deutsche Staatsoper in Berlin. This recording is from a live performance in Amsterdam on September 9, 2000. "What Next?" is a resolutely modern work -- atonal, non-melodic, without strong emotional weight. Think "Pierrot Lunaire" by Schoenberg. Carter says he aimed for a light tone rather than the heavy poetry he had used previously for vocal works -- anxiety and humor seem to be the two poles, indicating a bemused, detached existential dilemma. The libretto is by Paul Griffiths, the music critic, and is an absurdist scenario a la Samuel Beckett that begins with an auto accident. The five characters, which could be characterized as archetypes -- Earth Mother, Guru, Scientist, Diva and Clown -- although that is my interpretation, converse but fail to connect over 40 minutes, interrupted by one instrumental interlude at the half-way point. The singing is wonderful, the contrapuntal weaving of the voices (two sopranos, contralto, tenor and baritone) is superb, and the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra, Peter Eotvos conducting, is precise and supportive. The other piece, the 12-minute "Asko Concerto," composed in 2000 for a 16-piece chamber orchestra, is another delightful Carter composition featuring his typical use of different tempos for different instruments creating complex patterns, in this case separated by a recurring ritornello. The packaging is excellent, typical from ECM -- a booklet including the libretto, notes by Griffith and David Hamilton, and black-and-white photos, is enclosed with the jewel-case in a box. While not his best works, these are fine additions to Carter's magnificent oeuvre -- on to 100!
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Carter's one opera, at long long last, December 6, 2003
Carter wrote this 40-minute one-act opera in 1998, just before he turned 90. It is his one foray onto the stage, though in a sense, he has been writing operas all his life, assigning distinct personalities to the individual instruments in his chamber scores, which he has called "auditory scenarios." Here he does some wonderful things with an absurdist libretto by Paul Griffiths that is at once baffling and obvious. Six characters, gradually reciovering from a car accident, retreat into their own preoccupations rather than doing anything to help one another or rectify their situation. There isn't much conflict, but some of Griffith's observations are thought- provoking, and Carter's vocal writing is richly contrapuntal. The women in the cast make the strongest impressions, esp. contralto Hillary Summers as Stella. As substantial as the opera is, though, the real attraction of the disk is the Asko Concerto, a masterful little chamber symphony that packs a lot of color and drama into its 12-minute length. Some of the instrumental pairings -- violin and trumpet, or piccolo and xyplohone -- are real attention getters, and the studio performance is excellent. I'd never heard the work before, but now I can't get enough of it.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
What Next? on CD--a cause for celebration, December 20, 2003
Of late the American composer Elliott Carter (95 this December) has been increasingly prolific, and has matched this newfound rate of production with a style that has matched his highly dramatic, well-contrasted and hyper-complex atonal style with a newfound classical grace and lightness. This disc contrasts two recent works, the one-act opera What Next? (1997) and the ASKO Concerto (2000).What Next? is a six-handed opera in one act and two scenes to a libretto by the prominent music critic (and wannabe novelist) Paul Griffiths. It features a rather absurdist response by six characters to the aftermath of an auto wreck, with a constant shift in focus that was surely intended to highlight Carter's own compositional style. Taken as a work of literature, it is in my opinion rather weak--though that's true of most opera libretti--but the true test is on how well it meshes with the music, and it does that well. The opera starts with a crashing prelude, mainly for percussion (a section that is prominent amongst the chamber orchestra accompaniment) before moving swiftly through a series of episodes in which each character is very distinctly characterised by different musical material. The action is interrupted once by a slow, lyrical interlude before speeding to the end. This is a fine work, with very clean, delicate writing and excellent contrast between the vocal parts, but I don't feel it's essential late Carter in the way that, say, Symphonia, Luimen, Tempo e tempi or the Oboe Quartet are. The ASKO Concerto was written for the Dutch ensemble of that name. Scored for flute, oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, piano doubling celesta, harp, string quintet and percussion, it is--as in many other late Carter works--an essay in contrasting the full ensemble against small soloistic groups. A ritornello for the whole ensemble, constantly developing, is broken up by passages for, respectively, oboe, horn and viola, then clarinet and double bass, then bass clarinet, trombone and cello, then trumpet and violin, then piccolo, percussion, harp and violin, then bassoon. This work is certainly an essay in Classical grace, but once again I don't think it quite reaches the peaks of Carter's best recent work. This disc will be essential for all Carter fans, though with a few caveats. Firstly, the recording only contains 52 minutes of music: it is a pity ECM didn't add in another of Carter's recent chamber orchestra pieces. Secondly, the opera appears all on one track of the disc; it would have benefited from individual tracking of the thirty-eight numbers given in the libretto. Finally, while the performance of What Next? strikes me as outstanding, I feel there could be more levity and joy in the ASKO Concerto. Nonetheless, this is an important addition to the Carter discography.
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