Elliott Carter: Symphonia: Sum Fluxae Pretium Spei (1993-96) / Clarinet Concerto (1996) (20/21 series) - Oliver Knussen

Elliott Carter (Composer), Oliver Knussen (Conductor), London Sinfonietta (Orchestra), BBC Symphony Orchestra (Orchestra), clarinettist Michael Collins (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: clarinettist Michael Collins
• Orchestra: London Sinfonietta, BBC Symphony Orchestra
• Conductor: Oliver Knussen
• Composer: Elliott Carter
• Audio CD (January 11, 2000)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Deutsche Grammophon
• ASIN: B00000JSAJ
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #27,894 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #34 in Music > Classical > Instruments > Reeds & Winds > Clarinet
  • #78 in Music > Classical > Forms & Genres > Symphonies > Modern & 20th Century
  • #94 in Music > Classical > Historical Periods > Modern, 20th, & 21st Century > Forms & Genres > Symphonies

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As colorful as a bubble, and as difficult to capture., February 5, 2001

By 

tertius3 (MI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Elliott Carter: Symphonia: Sum Fluxae Pretium Spei (1993-96) / Clarinet Concerto (1996) (20/21 series) - Oliver Knussen (Audio CD)

Many reviewers have the highest praise for this premiere recording of Symphonia, so I listened...and am blown away. I don't understand all that's going on in this uncompromisingly modernist and dissonant work, but I'm surprised to like it and I return to a great piece of music. Like the bubble it's named for, the work opens with nothing if not scintillating effervescence. The ever-changing flux of through-composition has few points of imitation and easy recognition. The middle movement is low, slow, and long, unsettled and bleak in tone, the double basses a striking underpinning. The finale is swirling, windblown, and incandescent, gradually rising up through the orchestra until the inevitable fate is reached. This is remarkably beautiful and accessible music for a consumate arch-modernist, and leads me not to avoid his music in the future. The Clarinet Concerto (also 1996) is of the pointillist school of Webern. Each note is almost to be appreciated as a sound object, against the periodically shifting small ensembles of instruments. The brash music is characterized by extremely athletic leaps between the shrill and woody ends of the clarinet's range. The movements are contrasted by great changes in tempo, timbre, and dynamics, from excited twitterings to contemplative sonorities to ensemble sections with a metallic sheen of dissonance. The German disk of English musicians playing a great American composer is nicely packaged in a cardboard wallet. I hope it lasts as long as I think I am going to like this music!

26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Masterwork and Capstone of Cater's Career, January 12, 2000

By 

Karl Henzy - See all my reviews

This review is from: Elliott Carter: Symphonia: Sum Fluxae Pretium Spei (1993-96) / Clarinet Concerto (1996) (20/21 series) - Oliver Knussen (Audio CD)

Symphonia is Carter's masterpiece, and as he's already 91, it's likely to be the capstone to his long career. His music is, as ever, complex, but not just for complexity's sake. "Partita," the 1st movement, is the wild, playful opening. "Adagio tenebroso" is the slow, mournful procession in the middle (yet crackling with energy, and very beautiful). "Allegro scorrevole" is the brilliant synthesis, with long lyrical string lines rising and falling over rapid flurries in the winds. If you can appreciate modern music at all, listen to Symphonia several times and you'll begin to realize that it is the greatest symphony since Mahler.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars masterwork from a 20th century great, June 16, 2001

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: Elliott Carter: Symphonia: Sum Fluxae Pretium Spei (1993-96) / Clarinet Concerto (1996) (20/21 series) - Oliver Knussen (Audio CD)

"Symphonia: sum fluxae pretium spei" is Elliot Carter's greatest symphonic work since his 1969 "Concerto for Orchestra." What an accomplishment! Hearing Carter makes me want to spread the word that great composition is not in the past -- Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, have worthy successors today. "I am the prize of flowing hope" is the translation of the Latin title, and this might sound like arrogance, but it refers to a bubble, to the evanescence of life. Future accounts will surely marvel at Carter's productivity late in life (the polar opposite of Mozart). He composed the symphony in parts, but once complete in 1998, he moved on to quickly compose the Clarinet Concerto. If the disconnect between advanced music (both "contemporary classical" and avant-garde improvisation) and a mass audience is never overcome, the artistic and listening vanguards have each other! Here's a great line from Bayan Northcott's liner notes:

"Against all the minimalisms, retro-styles and compromises with commercialism that have marked the music of the last couple of decades, Symphonia embodies a comprehensive and uncompromising reaffirmation of the modernist vision."