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27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Essential Elliott Carter, February 17, 2001
Carter has been composing so much good music over the last decade that it's easy to forget he was writing classics before many of us were born. The pieces on this disk are a case in point--two generations of musicians have grown up since the earliest of them, the Cello Sonata, appeared in 1948. The sonata has been recorded probably more often than any other of Carter's works. New performances are appearing almost every day, but it's hard to see how they can better Joel Krosnick's warm, fluent interpretation. The rendition of the Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello, and Harpsichord is the best of several available--exuberant, dancelike, unbuttoned--and the performance of the Double Concerto is the only one available at present. That would scandal if the playing weren't so supple and sensitive. This disk is essential Carter: three masterpieces, each from a different decade, and each one a milestone in the composer's development. It is the one CD I would recommend to anyone approaching Carter's mature work for the first time.
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An outstanding introduction to a contemporary music giant, January 10, 2004
This disc collects three classic performances of major works from Elliott Carter's early maturity. The two sonatas date from the end of Carter's period of neo-classical writing, at a point where his music had started to achieve its trademark rhythmic complexity, though the harmonic and melodic writing is less dense than it was to become, and still largely tonal. In contrast, the concerto is a classic example of the hyper-complex, dense atonality that was to characterise the composer's mid-period works.The Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello and Harpsichord was written in 1952 and combines the neo-classical style Carter had learned so well from Nadia Boulanger with an increasing density and complexity of rhythm. (The composer, in his helpful inlay notes, observes that the work owes something to Debussy, and that is certainly true.) The sonata is in three movements: the first a rather ambiguous Risoluto, the second a slow movement with more vigorous undercurrents that briefly break through in a scherzando passage towards the end, and the finale a sequence of vigorous dances that sometimes overlap. This performance features four legendary figures in the performance of contemporary American music, and is the finest I've heard. Equally fine is the rendition of the Cello Sonata by Joel Krosnick (ex-Juilliard Quartet) and Paul Jacobs. This four-movement work has always struck me as the finest of Carter's tonal works and the ideal introduction to the composer. Its opening movement counterpoints intense, lyrical melody in the cello against regular percussive rhythms and jazzy chords in the piano. The second movement is a jazz-inflected scherzo, with the cello solo's notes often failing to coincide with those of the more rhythmically regular piano part. The third movement is an intense, rhythmically complex slow recitative for the cello and the finale a vigorous rondo that ends by returning to the music of the first movement, only with the instrumental roles reversed. The hyper-complex, atonal Double Concerto for Harpsichord and Piano with Two Chamber Orchestras, written between 1959 and 1961, is a very different work. A single-movement structure, conveniently separated into seven tracks on this recording, it begins with a percussive outburst that leads into an introductory section with musical exchanges between the two antiphonally divided ensembles that gradually grow in complexity. This is followed by a vigorous cadenza for the solo harpsichord and then a lively scherzo that is dominated by the sound of the piano and its accompanying ensemble. The music then gradually slows to a near halt for an elegiac section whose mood is only temporarily broken by a vigorous duet for piano and harpsichord. There then follows a brief presto, dominated by the harpsichord and its associated ensemble, a series of interrupted cadenzas for the piano and a coda in which the music disintegrates in a process similar to that of the introduction, only in reverse. This is music that takes some time to get to know, but it is unquestionably worth the effort. This disc is the ideal introduction to Carter's music. The Cello Sonata is the most accessible of all Carter's major works, and should appeal to almost everyone, and while the Double Concerto is less accessible, hearing it in the context of the works that lead up to it is the best way to understand it. Given that this recording contains an outstanding selection of works, presented in performances that have stood the test of time, it merits the highest possible level of recommendation to Carter fanatics and newcomers alike.
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9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A good place to start with Carter, May 16, 2004
By A Customer
Carter is considered to be perhaps the greatest living composer, and I didn't know any of his music, so after browsing the internet (and in particular,Amazon) for a place to start, I obtained this CD. I have been delighted with it. All of this music takes some acclimation, but that's the nice thing about a CD--you can stick a CD of new music in the car stereo and play it as often as you need to until it starts to reveal its treasures. In the case of this CD, all three works are rich in complexity and have required quite a bit of listening, but the effort was well worth it--two of the three works have revealed lots of treasures. The Cello Sonata is full of wonderful, even magical moments. The Sonata for Flute, Oboe... has been only slightly less rewarding. I like its playfulness. The only work on this disc that has proved resistant so far is the Double Concerto. Carter's unique twist on tonality that makes the other works so interesting seems to have disappeared in the Double Concerto, written later in his career, and I haven't found much to like in it. But the CD is worth obtaining for the two sonatas. They are great works.
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~ Elliott Carter
by Elliott Carter 
