Customer Reviews

Elliott Carter: Piano Concerto; Concerto for Orchestra; Concerto for Orchestra; Three Occasions

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This is a reissue of the 1992 Arte Nova disc which featured a spectacularly inappropriate still-life flower vase for a cover. These orchestral works by Elliott Carter are complex and teeming with conflict and dynamism, just like ... a vase of flowers. The unidentified cityscape is a big improvement, a standard symbol for modernity, complexity and motion.

This is the second recording of the "Piano Concerto" (1964-5 -- 22'31) by the team of conductor Michael Gielen and Ursula Oppens on piano, following their 1984 recording with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra on New World. This recording from eight years later with the SWR Symphony Orchestra of Baden-Baden & Freiburg is better, much better. The "Piano Concerto" is not one of Carter's best works, but this is its best performance and recording. It was written in Berlin near an American target range not long after the Wall went up, and the sound of machine guns is echoed in the eruptions of the orchestra in the second movement. Metaphysically, the "Piano Concerto" seems to have been inspired by the global "Cold War" conflict to address the tragedy of intractable human conflict.

The highlight of the disc is a performance of one of Carter's masterpieces, the "Concerto for Orchestra" (1969 -- 22'23). Commissioned by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic, their original recording failed to do justice to this fantastically complex work. The "Concerto" features four groups of instruments, each proceeding at a different tempo through the work, one of the best examples of this dynamic structural innovation in Carter's oeuvre. Gielen's recording follows by only a year the recording by Oliver Knussen and the London Sinfonietta, a performance supervised by the composer. I believe that 1991 Virgin recording, now reissued on EMI,stands as the finest available (see my review), but this is a strong alternative. Gielen leads the SWR to more powerful tutti passages than Knussen, but Knussen's reading is more transparent, more like Boulez in laying bare the intricacies of the score. Another advantage of the Virgin recording is that the "Concerto" is separated into six tracks, which makes it easier to hear the logic of the movements by listening to them one at a time.

The "Three Occasions for Orchestra" (1968-9 -- 17') is also found on the 1991 Virgin/EMI disc. This live recording does not compare to the crisper studio recording, but this Arte Nova disc affords an opportunity to hear an excellent Carter work at a bargain price.

The Piano concerto is one of Carter's finest achievements.
Initially, seeming like the hermetic norm one assosciates with this composer it slowly emerges as a piece with a real sense of passion and fantasy.On this rare occasion unleashed from his Nadia Boulanger heritage,there's something very likeable about the way the piano weaves it's way through an unwieldy orchestral mass.The melodic writing(most notably a bass clarinet solo)is also surprisingly engaging.A bleak piece-composed in Berlin amidst the height Cold War tensions-but strangely compelling.

Concerto for Orchestra remains a tough nut to crack.Maybe i need to hear the Knussen recording but it's hard to fathom the continuity and allure of this piece.It seems to have been composed by the page,without the fierce sense of urgency which are the hallmarks of equally dense orchestral works of Xenakis and Stockhausen.
Still,there are interesting features.Most notably,the way in which the orchestral piano almost takes on a heroic,soloistic role.

The three occasions might veer slightly in the direction of dryness but atleast no.1 has a splendidly visceral climax 1.5 minutes in! Rather dreary trombone line in no.2,but things improve in no.3 where Lulu-like string lines are accompanied by spasmodic yet urgent ticking motifs.

It has takened some time but I've grown to like the :Piano Concerto:, the untamed melodic ideas,fully combustible,the exciting piano textures,asymmetrical rhythms almost completely spontaneous,yet Carter keeps his materials on a leash, the darknessess of timbre as well,like you cannot see beyond what's in front of you, deeply claustrophobic, with density excesses, the ir-resolution really between the soloist and the orchestra. Both begin together herein,some odd clarinet timbre strikes away at the piano middle register.Abd we come away always liking what the piano does,we want the orchestra to go away.Carter let's the ugly beauty of single piano tones be heard, like another side of the shapes of things,Also The Bass Clarinet makes a new appearance for the Sixties.The work is incredibly compact, I think it works best,structurally for middle Carter. There is also much assimilation of the piano responding to the timbres, of where it is, the situation it finds itself in much like the reality encompassed during this period as automeus(the other review) had admirably said.
Ursula Oppens and Michael Gielen's recording is incredible,you may prefer that, the other is Charles Rosen he had recorded it as well,many years prior. We all come to think this music, because it is abstract and to a degree elitist was written in a conceptual vacuum, butthe vagaries of reality makes its way into the measures of the music the durational frames herein. Contrarywise the "Concerto for Orchestra" finds itself to convolutions, the Hegelian negative of the negative, like it needs and wants to do too much simultaneously,and doesn't know how,the procedural road becomes blocked; and this works quite well on paper, Carter sitting at his desk deep in compositional thought, but the listening experience is something else. There are the typical role playing(s) here only with less soloistic bearings to judge,snarling brass, overlylabored,penumbral; there are no individuals herein only forces,impacted tribes and masses, densities, of countrapuntal lines, arrays of melodies we hear instantaneously fast like in a dream sequence, they are gone before we know it.As a dream it is not realyed to you in a sequential fashion. Bernstein's romantically charged demeanor would have been perfect had he studied the score more, but it was like a giant abstract conceptual wave that quickly consumed poor Lenny.I don't think Boulez as Knussen would have triggered what the work needs either, it needs a little aggressive purpose to help unite the events sharp gestures not afraid of the consequences; here much of the work seems to meander,lost in an abyss.They are more suited for chamber readings as "Penthode",or the :Double Concerto:.

I discovered the ever-controversial composer Elliott Carter through his recent works like the "Symphonia" and the Cello Concerto. "What's the big deal," I thought, "he's no more out there than Lutoslawski or Lindberg, so why the public rage against him?" Well, on this Arte Nova release, a reissue of a 1992 disc, I got an answer. Michael Gielen leads the SWF Symphony Orchestra, with Ursula Oppens as piano soloist.

The two-movement "Piano Concerto" (1964-1965) is notable for its overt dramatic arc. The piano is a lone individual against the orchestral mob, and their interaction is violent. The piano is surrounded by a small ensemble of seven players who seem to support the piano, but are ultimately false comforters to the piano's Job, as Carter puts it. This form has been used successfully in Lutoslawski's cello concerto and Schnittke's viola concerto, and here it holds interest. And as ever, there are delightful experiments with varying rhythms. But there's a major problem with Carter here: his music is totally void of colour. I listen exclusively to modern repertoire, so I've no fear of the atonal, but you'd think an orchestra has more sonorities to offer then the same drab thumps that characterize this piece.

The same problem plagues the single-movement "Concerto for Orchestra" (1969). Still, one can admire the virtuosity present in the writing of all orchestral parts, and the way in which the spotlight is passed from each of the four instrumental groups to another is somewhat elegant. But in addition to Carter's monochromatic palette, the recording of these first two pieces is not ideal, it sounds as if the entire orchestra were playing inside a clown car.

With the "Three Occasions for Orchestra" (1986-1989), Carter has mellowed, and colour is definitely present. These three pieces were composed at different times and merely collected together for convenience. The first, "A Celebration of 100 x 150 Notes" was writen for the Houston Symphony to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Texas. It's a fanfare lasting exactly 150 bars that, for has its uncomprising modernism, has some downright charming writing for brass. "Remembrace" was written as a memorial for Paul Fromm, its sad expanses foretell the middle movement of his "Symphonia". "Anniversary" was written on the occasion of his fiftieth wedding anniversary to his wife Helen Carter, it's an airy piece, though feels somewhat fluffy and insubstantial after a few listens.

The disc comes with liner notes amounting to two pages. These lack any analysis of the pieces, giving instead mere context on when they were written. For more in-depth coverage of the music, I'd recommend David Schiff's THE MUSIC OF ELLIOTT CARTER (Cornell University Press, 1998).

For listening for mere idle pleasure, the recent Carter serves much better. These pieces here have some fascinating rhythmic and programmatic features, which does provide a reason to buy the disc for Carter fans, but the two concertos are pretty ugly music.

Foundation Music, as Britten used to describe this kind of music. Personally, I have a number of scores of Carter's in my library. I enjoy studying them for technical reasons. But I don't care to hear the music. I prefer to leave the music to paper.