Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
strong 1992 performances, August 4, 2005
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 SWF Symphony Orchestra of Baden-Baden 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 SWFSO 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.
|
|
|
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A classic Carter recording reissued, March 4, 2006
This budget-price recording, featuring two Elliott Carter specialists, the pianist Ursula Oppens and the conductor Michael Gielen, has long been a highlight of the composer's discography. Now reissued in rather more attractive packaging, it remains an essential disc for those who know and love Carter's highly complex, densely atonal music.
The 1965 Piano Concerto is one of the composer's most difficult--yet most rewarding--pieces. It's written in two movements, and to add to the complexity of the music, there's a small sub-orchestra that acts as an intermediary between the soloist and the full orchestra. (No wonder that Carter now says he could never again write works like the Piano Concerto--they'd just take up too much time.) It's a highly dramatic work, with the piano constantly at odds with the orchestra, and the sub-orchestra attempting to bring about some kind of rapprochement between the soloist and orchestra. In the end, this fails, and in a truly terrifying climax the pounding drums finally silence the soloist--only for her to start up again in a slow, quiet coda.
Of the three recordings--all very good--that I've heard of this concerto, this is the strongest. Mark Wait's on Naxos lacks the truly apocalyptic resonances of the climax, and Oppens' earlier New World recording, to my mind, operates on a slightly lower level of tension than the present reading.
The Concerto for Orchestra was written soon after the Piano Concerto, and is a similarly dramatic work, if slightly less fierce. It has an openly literary program, being inspired by St John Perse's poem "Vents," which depicts the destruction and renewal of America through violent windstorms. After an opening tutti, the work evokes the winds of the four seasons by focusing on a different section of the orchestra for each season, before reaching a violent climax and fading away.
Of the easily available rivals to this recording, Oliver Knussen's recording with the London Sinfonietta is the most competitive. It features somewhat better playing and clearer detail, though it doesn't quite have the dramatic sweep of the present recording. Leonard Bernstein's Sony recording, while dramatic, disqualifies itself as a first choice through the many inaccuracies in the playing.
The disc closes with a less ambitious, more recent piece, the Three Occasions for Orchestra. Compared to the two earlier works, this one shows the slimming down of style that has been prominent in Carter's work over the last 20 years, to my mind, with mixed results--though the textures are clearer, more joyous, something of the dramatic sweep and intensity has been lost. The work begins with a complex fanfare, continues with a bleak elegy and concludes with a celebratory last movement. While not major Carter, it can perhaps be considered significant as it forms a sort of miniature prototype of his key 1990s work, Symphonia.
Knussen's London Sinfonietta recording is, again, the competitor here. It is technically superior, but I find Gielen has a warmth that Knussen doesn't quite match.
Overall, this is an essential disc for any Carter enthusiast, though, due to the highly complex nature of the two concertos, it may not be the ideal place for a newcomer to start (I'd still direct such people to the Elektra Nonesuch disc of the Double Concerto, the Cello Sonata and the Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello and Harpsichord).
|
|
|
4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
worth having for the piano concerto-one of EC's best pieces, September 25, 2005
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.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
~ Elliott Carter
~ Carter
~ Fred Sherry
- the new music site from IMDb and Amazon.
