Elliott Carter: Piano Concerto

Elliott Carter (Composer), Michael Gielen (Conductor), Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (Orchestra), Ursula Oppens (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Ursula Oppens
• Orchestra: Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra
• Conductor: Michael Gielen
• Composer: Elliott Carter
• Audio CD (December 8, 1992)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: New World Records
• ASIN: B0000030DO
• Also Available in: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #192,033 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #81 in Music > Classical > Historical Periods > Modern, 20th, & 21st Century > Forms & Genres > Variations

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Piano Concerto not as good as the competition, July 19, 2001

By 

Eric Grunin (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Elliott Carter: Piano Concerto (Audio CD)

Oppens and Gielen did a 'remake' of the Piano Concerto eight years later. That performance (on Arte Nova with the SWF orchestra) is a bit better - Oppens gets more of the notes, and Gielen has a better grasp of how the big gestures work. (Also, the timpani don't constantly drown out the orchestra like they do here.) The Arte Nova release comes at a super-budget price, too.

Don't know the Variations for Orchestra well enough to have an opinion, but the competition seems strong (especially Levine/Chicago).

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Performance Available of Elliott Carter's Great Piano Concerto, December 29, 2005

By 

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

This review is from: Elliott Carter: Piano Concerto (Audio CD)

There are three performances available of Elliott Carter's great Piano Conerto (two with Ursula Oppens as soloist and Michael Gielen conducting), and this one is the best of the lot. The others may be more accurate or more clearly engineered, as some other reviewers here have stated, but this one is the most gripping. (Reviewing the live concert, critic Andrew Porter called it a performance of the highest order.) The difference? The wonderful playing of the Cincinnati Symphony and the seven-member concertino with which Carter surrounds the soloist. Despite all the talk about Carter's recent "Indian summer" --- composing past the age of 90 --- my favorite music of his comes from his 20-year "high modernist" period, from the Second Quartet of 1959 through the Night Fantasies of 1980. The Piano Concerto, written in the mid-60s, is a masterpiece in a series of masterpieces and one of Carter's most powerful scores. It is a brutal, tragic, heartbreaking work in which the orchestra seems to beat the soloist down just as she begins to take wing. The playing of the orchestral soloists is beautifully phrased, particularly Phillip Ruder's searing, fluent violin. The music goes by really fast, and requires careful, intense listening, but both the concerto and the performance reward the effort. Longtime Carter champion Ursula Oppens has made the work a specialty and has worked closely with the composer in shaping her perfromance. She is flawless.

The Variations from 1954 is a good introduction to Carter's mature orchestral writing --- less initially daunting than the concerto --- and Gielen gives an exciting, insightful account. Carter expert David Schiff has said that the piece really belongs to the more conservative tradition of the Great American Symphonies of Copland and William Schuman, and, in his view, it outdoes them both. Who am I to argue?

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars post-humous composing?, November 7, 2003

By 

J. F. Laurson (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Elliott Carter: Piano Concerto (Audio CD)

Nietzsche described himself as a post-humous philosopher - and meant more with that than simply a defiant and perhaps unoriginal response of a genius to its being misunderstood until long after their demise. But that is well enough to think about in terms of Carter's music. The Piano Concerto in particular is a monumental work in classical music in the 20th century. Intellectually and structurally (if perhaps never emotionally) it will one day be considered on par with any of Beethoven's Piano Concertos.

When listening to Carter, you do it for a few reasons: As an intellectual excercise, in order to satisfy the fire of pretension burning inside ye (not the worst of motivations to pursue high art, if I may add) or simply for the rythmical and structural delight that is clearly audible. This also means that Carter is not Sunday-morning family-brunch listening. You spouse may pour hot coffee over you, your children might want to move out. But a Scotch, a nice Chair, a Thursday evening - and Carter can reveal as much and more than any other modern composer can.

The recording on Arte Nova is indeed a notch better, but it lacks the coupeling. Either are well worth getting - and given that one approaches them with the right openness and expectations, will only reward... and richly so.