Elliot Carter: What Next? [Import]

Dean Elzinga (Performer), Elliott Carter (Composer), Peter Eötvös (Conductor), Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra (Orchestra), Valdine Anderson (Performer), Sarah Leonard (Performer), William Joyner (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Dean Elzinga, Valdine Anderson, Sarah Leonard, William Joyner
• Orchestra: Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra
• Conductor: Peter Eötvös
• Composer: Elliott Carter
• Audio CD (November 25, 2003)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: ECM New Series
• ASIN: B000094HLB
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #349,995 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

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

By 

R. Hutchinson "autonomeus" (a world ruled by fossil fuels and fossil minds) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Elliot Carter: What Next? (Audio CD)

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!

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

By 

Joe Barron (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Elliot Carter: What Next? (Audio CD)

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.

3.0 out of 5 stars As cool as it was that Carter wrote an opera when pushing 90, it seems a minor part of his oeuvre, April 10, 2009

By 

Christopher Culver - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Elliot Carter: What Next? (Audio CD)

After the American modernist composer Elliott Carter wrote his longest work yet, the "Symphonia: Sux Fluxae Pretium Spei" for orchestra when he well into his 80s, he swiftly embarked on another grandiose project. "What Next?" (1997-8) is a one-act opera with libretto by Paul Griffiths. The music is in Carter's late style, where instruments tend to speak one after the other instead of all at the same time, and there is a great amount of pitched percussion. Far from the monochromatic feel of earlier mature Carter, here the musical lines are of as much variety as the speaking parts. The general mood throughout is humourous, however. Though atonal music has been accused by the conservatives of being appropriate only for the expression of stress or mourning, you'll find no bitter tragedy here.

Unfortunately, the opera may not survive to any kind of classic status, due to its awful libretto by Griffiths. The opera opens with some kind of unspecified disaster (a plane crash? a factory explosion? but probably a car crash) happening offstage. For the entire act, the handful of characters argue about what happened and what they were doing when it happened. The dialogue is clunky and pretenious. It seems like every project Griffiths is involved with gets initial praise and then sinks right into deserved obscurity, like Tan Dun's Grawemeyer-winning opera MARCO POLO or his collaboration with Frances-Marie Uitti There is Still Time.

The disc is filled out by the "ASKO Concerto" (2000), a piece written just after Carter's 91st birthday. This is a sort of concerto grosso, a form Carter became increasingly interested in at the close of the 1990s. His music here, though punctuated with a few brash outbursts, is generally lively and lyrical. A performance by the ASKO Ensemble is available on a Bridge disc, but this performance here by the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra is competitive (funny how Eotvos and company beat the dedicatees to a world premiere recording).