sign in sign up
<<
Home , Asko Concerto, Double Concerto (Carter), Harold Meltzer, Horn Concerto (Carter), Interventions (Carter), Night Fantasies

Ellliott Carter (b. 1908)

1 90+ (1994) (4:55)

2 Retrouvailles (2000) (1:38)

3 (1980) (19:48) Producer & Engineer: Judith Sherman Engineering & Editing Assistant: Jeanne Velonis Two Diversions (1999) (7:28) Graphic Design: Melanie Germond 4 I. (4:03) 5 Cover Photo: Christian Steiner II. (3:21) Photo of and (p. 3 & traycard): Malcolm Addey 6 Matribute* (2007) (2:05) Recorded February 4–8, 2008, at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, NYC OPPENS Sonata (1945–46) (23:31) Steinway Piano 7 I. Maestoso; Legato scorrevole (10:22) PLAYS Publishers: 8 II. Andante (13:03) 90+, Retrouvailles, Two Diversions for Piano, Two Thoughts about Piano (Caténaires and CARTER Intermittences): Hendon Music, Inc Two Thoughts About the Piano (2005–06) (10:55) Night Fantasies: Associated Music Publishers 9 Intermittences (7:04) Matribute: Boosey & Hawkes, Inc. bk ELLIOTT Piano Sonata: Theodore Pressser Company Caténaires* (3:48)

Total: (70:53) CARTER Cedille Records is a trademark of The Chicago Classical Recording Foundation, a not-for-profit foundation devoted to promoting the finest musicians and ensembles in the Chicago area. AT 100 The Chicago Classical Recording Foundation’s activities are supported in part by contributions Ursula Oppens piano and grants from individuals, foundations, corporations, and government agencies including the Alphawood Foundation, Irving Harris Foundation, Kirkland & Ellis Foundation, NIB Foundation, *World Premiere Recording THE Negaunee Foundation, Sage Foundation, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs (CityArts III Grant), and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency. COMPLETE

Contributions to The Chicago Classical Recording Foundation may be made at PIANO www.cedillerecords.org or 773-989-2515. MUSIC CDR 90000 108 P&C 2008 Cedille Records Trademark of The Chicago Classical Recording Foundation. All Rights Reserved. 24 CARTER AT THE KEYBOARD “black and white” medium for musical from the sounds and playing techniques was his evolution between them — or Notes by Bayan Northcott studies after the manner of Schoenberg, of the very instruments for which he was that the hand that wrote the grand pan- or of Stockhausen who described the writing — an endeavour that was to cul- diatonic apostrophes that launch the Thinking back to his Upper West Side succession of solo piano pieces scattered minate in the vastly elaborate structures Sonata was the same that dashed off boyhood just after the First through his output as his “line-draw- of his middle years. Night Fantasies the skittish chromatics of Matribute sixty World War, Elliott Carter has recalled ings.” Of course, Carter has composed epitomises such sonic-structural think- two years later. Certain attitudes and that, “Despite the fact that neither of my an impressive succession of concer- ing in particularly concentrated form, but predilections have nonetheless remained parents was particularly musical, they tante works — the Double for it also puts in place the final technical pretty constant in Carter’s approach to did have a player-piano and decided, piano and harpsichord (1961), the Piano elements making for the extraordinary the piano over the decades. when I was in the third or fourth grade, Concerto (1966), for piano and integration and consistency of Carter’s that I should take piano lessons. As a large ensemble (2003), for musical language since around 1980 Like the great 19th and early 20th cen- result of this I began to have to learn piano and (2007) — and he — an integration that has enabled him to tury composer-performers, Carter has Chopin and practise scales and the rest has frequently used the instrument in his compose with an enhanced spontaneity always regarded the keyboard as a chal- of it which I just hated for a very long orchestral and chamber works. Yet, until and fancifulness, not least in the half lenge to virtuosity: how much one pair time.” Nevertheless, he persisted dog- his 86th year, his published catalogue for dozen shorter piano pieces that make up of human hands, moving with maximum gedly enough to be able to perform solo piano comprised just two scores: the rest of this disc. agility, strength, and variety of touch, Scriabin and Schoenberg in concert dur- the Sonata for Piano (1946) and Night can draw from the percussive and reso- ing his student years, and the few pre- Fantasies (1980). Maybe the composer Carter most resem- nant sonorities of the seven-and–a-bit cious seconds of documentary footage bles in this progress is Brahms, who octaves of the modern concert grand of the mature Carter trying over pas- It would, however, be no exaggeration preoccupied himself with sonata forms (plus foot control of its three pedals). All sages in progress at his workroom piano to describe these as the turning points, early on, piano variations in mid-career of his solo piano writing is technically in more recent decades have suggested the hinges between the three periods in (Night Fantasies could be construed as demanding; even the Two Diversions he retains a considerable technique. which we increasing perceive Carter’s a kind of variation sequence), and collec- intended for young players are tricky development. In its harmonic ambience tions of concentrated miniatures late on. for all but the most proficient amateurs. Any idea of pursuing an executant’s and thematic working, the Piano Sonata But, aside from a comparable concern This love of virtuosity has recurrently career, however, was stymied early by still retains echoes of the neo-classi- for compositional facture and coherent expressed itself in contrasts of the most “poor performing nerves”; and one could cal and American populist idioms from detail, there is little in Carter’s music to powerfully amassed chordal sonorities hardly suggest that the piano has proved which the young Carter strove to extract remind us overtly of Brahms. Indeed, a with glittering flights of toccata figura- as indispensable to Carter’s musical his own voice in the late 1930s and early listener coming to his Piano Sonata and tion. Behind such textural juxtapositions, thought as it was to such composers ‘40s; but it is already well advanced upon Night Fantasies for the first time might one senses a more abstract background as Beethoven, Chopin, or Debussy; nor, his endeavour to generate the entire find it difficult to believe they were the process, as though Carter conceives the again, has he consistently used it as a formal and expressive fabric of his works work of the same composer, so radical piano’s range as space to be mapped out

4 5 in contrasting areas, heights and depths miered by Guiseppe Scotese on June 11, less than four Boulez birthdays with fellow pianists, Ursula Oppens, Charles — with the actual piece comprising, as it 1994, at the Pontino Festival dedicated celebratory pieces. In 2000, he was one Rosen, and Gilbert Kalish, to join him in were, a journey across that map. Such an to Petrassi’s birthday. In his program of twelve composers — including Berio, commissioning the present work, with apprehension of different regions being note, Carter writes: “90+ for piano is built Birtwistle, Kurtag, Lindberg, and Rihm funds raised by The American Music traversed is perhaps especially imma- around ninety short, accented notes played — commissioned by the Southbank Center of New York. Partly inspired by nent in Night Fantasies, but one sus- in a slow regular beat. Against these, the Board in London to compose a short the contrasting personalities of the four pects comparable conceptions, whether context changes character continually.” piece for Boulez’s 75th birthday. These pianists, all well-known to him, Carter elaborate or summary, lie equally behind However, this slow tactus is out of sync were duly launched in Boulez’s pres- turned to the 19th century genre of char- the broad spans of the Piano Sonata or with the mostly 4/4 bar structure of the ence at a concert on June 26, 2000, by acter-piece exemplified in such collec- a late, ostensibly linear miniature such score, so that the regular beats seem to the young British pianist Rolf Hind, and tions as Schumann’s Kreisleriana. Yet, as Caténaries. It is the way that Carter play hide and seek with their surrounding issued on an instant CD to ticket holders far from comprising a picturesque set contrives, sooner or later, to visit every figures and chords. Towards the centre after the concert, courtesy of BBC Radio of miniatures, the continuous resulting area of the notional map of the piece in of the piece, the texture thins to mere 3. The title means things retrieved, and 20-minute score emerged as among the progress, so that the whole keyboard is sprinkling of staccato notes, as though the piece duly reworks the motto on the most demanding to perform and to com- ultimately “covered,” that lends his end- most of the connecting texture had been letters of Boulez’s name that Carter had prehend in his entire output; a work, ings their special sense of completion. rubbed out. Events then accumulate to a already used in his duo for flute and clari- indeed, which has hailed brief climax, breaking off for the emphatic net Esprit Rude/ Esprit Doux (1985) com- as the most significant new contribution 90th beat. However, in a charming coda, posed for Boulez’s 60th birthday and the to the repertoire of transcendental pian- 90+ (1994) the beats continue at a quickening pace, trio Esprit Rude/ Esprit Doux, II (1995) for ism since Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit. as though Carter were wishing Petrassi to his 70th. Variants of this stride through When Carter’s vast and innovatory live on into his 120s… Retrouvailles surrounded by a volatile In his preface, Carter writes: String Quartet No 1 (1950–51) received conspectus of Carterian piano gestures its Italian premiere in Rome in 1953, Retrouvailles (2000) and textures, so that the piece sounds far Night Fantasies is a piano piece of among the first to offer congratulations more substantial than the mere minute- continually changing moods, sug- was the distinguished Italian composer Of all Carter’s younger contemporaries, and-a-half it takes to play. gesting the fleeting thoughts and Goffredo Petrassi. During Carter’s several it is probably with that he feelings that pass through the subsequent residencies over the years has most intensively compared notes Night Fantasies (1980) mind during a period of wakeful- in the American Academy in Rome, their over compositional concepts and details ness at night. The quiet nocturnal acquaintance grew into a warm friend- of technique. Boulez has written admir- Doubtless it was with the idea of tempt- evocation with which it begins ship, and it was to celebrate Petrassi’s ingly of Carter’s handling of time and ing Carter back to large-scale solo piano and [to which it] returns occa- 90th birthday that Carter wrote this first of “the gripping complexity of his poetic composition that the late sionally, is suddenly broken by his late miniatures — the piece being pre- universe,” while Carter has marked no invited three of his most distinguished a flighty series of short phrases

6 7 that emerge and disappear. This In seeking to hold the work’s various Two Diversions (1999) Weill Recital Hall on March 2, 2000, with episode is followed by many oth- moods and textures together, Carter laid Kirill Gerstein from the Manhattan School ers of contrasting characters and out a comprehensive harmonic “back- These two short studies are rather of Music premiering the Carter. lengths that sometimes break ground” of 88 all-interval chords, while exceptional in Carter’s output in being in abruptly and, at other times, backing his rhythms by two distinct puls- addressed not to the most brilliant vir- Matribute (2007) develop smoothly out of what es — like two clocks ticking at slightly tuosi, but to more modest techniques, has gone before. The work cul- different rates — which only coincide particularly of young players. One of ten Carter’s titles in more recent years minates in a loud, obsessive rep- twice: near the beginning and towards composers invited to contribute to the have ranged from laconically abstract etition of an emphatic chord that, the end. Neither of these procedures Carnegie Hall Millennium Piano Book, — Changes, , Interventions as it dies, brings the work to its is easily apprehensible by the listener, he here reverts somewhat to the more — to poetic — Scrivo in Vento, In the conclusion. nor are they intended to be. Rather, clear-cut constructivist techniques of the Distances of Sleep — to teasingly the referential chords helped the com- late 1940s when he was building on the oblique — such as Au Quai, which, in As this suggests, Night Fantasies comes poser to monitor the consistency of his breakthrough discoveries of the Piano addition to punning on the initials of its over very much as the darkly volatile harmony, just as the pulses helped him Sonata, and adapting to his own pur- dedicatee Oliver Knussen, depends, for opposite to the Piano Sonata’s ordered to define the rhythmic independence poses certain cross-rhythmic ideas of his its full meaning, upon knowledge of an brightness: erupting out of a tensely of the two hands. As always in Carter, colleague and friend, . anecdote told by Schoenberg! Matribute, measured stillness in an often turbid technical innovations are only a means The Two Diversions, he writes, exploit “a however — requested by flux of tortuous lines and angry ges- to an expressive or poetic end — though growing contrast between simultaneous as a birthday offering to his mother Helen tures, periodically lit by tingling meteor he was to continue exploring the possi- musical ideas.” Diversion 1 “presents a Levine — is exactly what it says: a tribute showers of figuration and with a recita- bilities of such comprehensive harmonic line of paired notes, musical intervals, to Ma. Technically, Carter could have tivo collerico of nagging tritones (played and double-pulse schemes in many of that maintain a single speed throughout, called it Diversion 3, since it comprises mainly by the thumbs!) at its centre. his subsequent scores of the 1980s while the other very changeable material a comparable study in contrary rates of Although certain textures recur, there and ‘90s. Of the four commissioning uses many different speeds and charac- unfolding. It begins with fragmentary are no themes in the traditional sense; pianists, it fell to Ursula Oppens to give ters.” Diversion 2 “contrasts two musi- fast figuration in the right hand against Carter is concerned rather with the expe- the world premiere at the Bath Festival cal lines, one of which, on the whole, a deep sustained line in the left. On rience of changefulness itself. The cul- (then directed by Carter’s long-standing grows slower and slower, while the other its periodic resumptions, the slow line minating chord he mentions comprises supporter Sir William Glock) on June 2, grows faster and faster” — an idea, tends to quicken and rise in pitch until a grinding dissonance of just four widely 1980, when the performance was pref- one might add, that Carter had already it fuses with the fast figuration in a cor- spaced pitches that continually interrupt aced with a short spoken introduction by exploited dramatically long before in his uscating upward flurry, terminated by a the flow like an insomniac’s Idée fixe the present writer. (1961). Ursula Oppens single staccato C natural. Maestro Levine — until, unexpectedly, the music quietly and four students presented the entire played the first performance himself in drops off to sleep. Millennium Piano Book in Carnegie Hall’s Lucerne on August 27, 2007.

8 9 Piano Sonata (1945–46) which it was realized, it was arguably the Although technically in a new key, the neo-classicism. And if no subsequent most radical of all. sarabande-like opening of the second Carter work sounds quite like it either, it Shortly before going to Harvard in 1926, movement sounds more like a variant remains the work in which he found his Carter has recalled, “I had already tried For while the opening movement can of the beginning of the first than a fresh true “way” and first revealed his scope. writing a very ‘advanced’ and compli- be heard more or less as a traditional departure. After an ensuing, more rock- cated piano sonata... which I showed to sonata form and the second comprises ing episode, Carter resorts, as in certain Intermittences (2005) (Two Thoughts at the time. He encouraged a fast fugue flanked by a more stately transitional junctures in the first move- about the Piano, Part 1) me to go on and become a composer, introduction and epilogue, they are not ment, to harmonics — sounds evoked by which I very much wanted to do, though really generated by the thematic material pressing piano keys silently and activating This concentrated single-movement for a long time I didn’t admit this to my that appears in them; the themes serve their humming resonances by staccato piece was co-commissioned by the parents.” However, all traces of that rather as section-markers on the sur- lower notes. Out of these, the theme of Carnegie Hall Corporation and the early effort had disappeared by the time face of a musical flow built out of more the fugue gradually takes shape. But the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival Carter embarked upon the present work, fundamental harmonic and rhythmic fugue itself, again on a fast regular pulse, for Peter Serkin, who gave the pre- while his review of the belated, but elements. At the outset, Carter slowly is as much concerned with rhythmic miere in Miller Auditorium, Kalamazoo, rapturously received premiere of Ives’s alternates deep pedal notes on B and variation as with the theme — which is Michigan on May 3, 2006. In its frequent Concord Sonata in 1939 showed that he B-flat, catching their higher resonances progressively shortened on its reappear- use of dense and gritty chords, this now felt the music of his mentor was in chords of fifths and thirds which, vari- ances. Following the grandiose upward is, among Carter’s more recent pieces, often confused and fell short of its aspi- ously superimposed and “colored” by flourishes with which the fugue culmi- the most reminiscent in sound to Night rations. Meanwhile, he was well aware accidentals are to infuse the harmony of nates, the sarabande idea and harmonics Fantasies, while its reactivation of har- of his older friend Copland’s formidable the entire work. Soon the fingers take return, the movement slowly unwinding monics — notably to alter the timbre recent Piano Sonata (1943) and that his up these harmonies, breaking them into to a luminous stasis on B. of recurrent pitches, as at the very end younger contemporary, , irregular groupings of a regular fast pulse — even harks back to the Sonata. Yet was about to embark on an ambitious to create dazzling flights of figuration First heard in a New York broadcast its brusqueness of unfolding, forever sonata for Horowitz. On the face of it, — a kind of modern Scarlatti sound. Only performance by Webster Aitken on punctuated by jump-cuts of texture and the 23-minute two-movement structure subsequently does the music settle on a February 16, 1947, the Sonata takes unpredictable pauses lends it an entirely Carter completed in 1946, with the sup- more moderately flowing modal “second further certain devices of Carter’s ear- different character. As Carter wrote: “The port of a Guggenheim Award, was milder subject”; and it is the cross-cutting of lier works and retains, in its polydiatonic many meanings silence can express in a in idiom than either the austere, hard-bit- these three types of music that drives ambience, resonances of Copland and musical discourse challenged me to use ten Copland or the chromatically rampag- the first movement as much as its appar- even (then) recent Stravinsky. Yet it only some of them in Intermittences. The title ing Barber, let alone the transcenden- ent sonata form — until it finally comes passingly alludes to American folkism, was suggested by ‘Intermittences du tally dissonant Ives. Yet in its underlying to provisional rest on B-flat. while its big-boned rhetoric is already a coeur’, one of the chapters in Proust’s concept and the clear-headedness with world away from the clipped niceties of novel. It is a short work which uses

10 11 many different piano sounds to convey cross-pulsations. No wonder Carter ABOUT URSULA OPPENS its expressive meanings.” Although first has come to feel this incessant piece composed as complete in itself, and still belongs with Intermittences: together Ursula Oppens is one of the very first artists to program traditional and contemporary performable as such, Carter has come they create a perfect balance of oppo- works in equal measure. An enduring commitment to integrating new music into to regard Intermittences as part of a sites. Yet there are precedents in the regular concert life has led Ms. Oppens to commission and premiere countless com- diptych entitled Two Thoughts About the toccata-writing that intermittently darts positions. In addition to her long and productive association with Elliott Carter, she Piano, completed by… through all of Carter’s previous piano has premiered works by such leading composers as , , pieces — and, perhaps, more remotely, , , Tania Leon, , György Ligeti, Witold Caténaires (2006) (Two Thoughts About in the strange one-line moto perpetuo Lutoslawski, Conlon Nancarrow, , , , Amy the Piano, Part 2) Chopin composed as the finale to his Williams, Christian Wolff, Amnon Wolman, and . Piano Sonata in B-flat minor. If so, it is a Considering his previous output and pleasing irony from a composer who set Ms. Oppens has performed with virtually all of the world’s major . She known predilections, Caténaires is, on out 90 years ago just hating to practise has been heard with the , Boston Symphony Orchestra, the face of it, the unlikeliest of all Carter’s Chopin. , American Composers Orchestra, and the orchestras of piano works. “When Pierre-Laurent Chicago, Cleveland, San Francisco, and Milwaukee. Abroad, she has appeared with Aimard, who performs so eloquently, such orchestras as the Berlin Symphony, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Deutsche asked me to write a piece for him,” Symphonie, and the BBC Scottish and London Philharmonic Orchestras. She has Carter confesses, “I became obsessed also performed as the piano soloist for the Mark Morris Company’s Mozart Dances. with the idea of a fast one-line piece An avid chamber musician, Ms. Oppens has performed with the Arditti, Juilliard, with no chords. It became a continuous Pacifica, and Rosetti quartets, among others. She is a prolific recording artist, many chain of notes using different spacings, of whose discs, including her recording of the landmark Frederic Rzewski work, “The accents and colourings, to produce a People United Will Never Be Defeated,” are phonographic classics. wide variety of expression.” The piece Aimard duly found himself launching at Ms. Oppens launched Mr. Carter’s year-long 100th birthday celebration by perform- Zankel Hall, New York, on December 11, ing a solo recital of his works in January 2007 at Symphony Space in New York 2006, not only comprises an unbroken City. In fall 2008, Ms. Oppens takes up her new post as Distinguished Professor of four-minute succession of 16th notes Music at and the CUNY Graduate Center in . From permutating and arpeggiating all over 1994 through the end of the 2007–08 academic year she served as John Evans the keyboard at a terrifying speed, but Distinguished Professor of Music at in Evanston, Illinois. requires all manner of irregular changes of touch and dynamics, suggesting, in its later stages, a succession of “ghost”

12 13 ABOUT ELLIOTT CARTER (b. 1908)

Twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, first composer to receive the Carter continues to show his mastery in smaller forms as well. Along with a large National Medal of Arts, one of the few composers ever awarded Germany’s Ernst number of brief solo and chamber works, his later years have brought major essays von Siemens Music Prize, and in 1988 made “Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et such as the Quintet for piano and winds (1991), String Quartet No.5 (1995) composed des Lettres” by the Government of France, Elliott Carter is internationally recognized for the , and (2000) for Holland’s ASKO Ensemble. as one of the leading American voices of the classical music tradition. He recently Recent premieres of chamber works include the playfully humorous Mosaic, by received the Prince Pierre Foundation Music Award, bestowed by the Principality of the Nash Ensemble in 2005, as well as three premieres in 2006: Intermittences, Monaco, and is one of a handful of living composers elected to the Classical Music a piano solo co-commissioned by the Carnegie Hall Corporation and The Gilmore Hall of Fame. International Keyboard Festival and performed by Peter Serkin; In the Distances of Sleep, with Michelle DeYoung and the MET Chamber Ensemble under James First encouraged toward a musical career by his friend and mentor Charles Ives, Levine; and Caténaires, a solo piano piece performed by Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Most Carter was recognized by the Pulitzer Prize Committee for the first time in 1960 for recently, Carter’s , written for James Sommerville, was premiered on his groundbreaking String Quartet No. 2. Stravinsky hailed Carter’s Double Concerto November 15, 2007 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under James Levine. for harpsichord, piano, and two chamber orchestras (1961) and (1967) as “masterpieces.” While he spent much of the 1960s composing just two December 11, 2008, will mark Carter’s 100th birthday. works, the Piano Concerto and (1969), the breakthroughs he achieved in those pieces led to an artistic resurgence that gathered momentum in the decades that followed. Indeed, one of the extraordinary features of Carter’s career is his unabated productivity and creative vitality as he reaches the zenith of his tenth decade.

This astonishing late-career creative burst has resulted in a plethora of new works. The first few weeks of 2004 brought a pair of acclaimed new scores: Micomicon, a witty concert-opener for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and the incisive Dialogues for piano and large ensemble, commissioned by the London Sinfonietta. France enjoyed the world premiere of Réflexions at Cité de la Musique in February 2005, celebrating the work with multiple ovations. In October 2005, the Boston Symphony Orchestra brought to life Carter’s Three Illusions for Orchestra, a piece The Boston Globe called “surprising, inevitable, and vividly orchestrated.” In the same month, assumed the roles of conductor and pianist in the world premiere of Soundings with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

14 15 ALSO BY ELLIOTT CARTER ON CEDILLE RECORDS

Early Chamber Music of Elliott Carter Chicago Pro Musica Cedille Records CDR 90000 048

“H H H H These are pieces that bridge the gap between Carter’s populist tendencies as a youngish composer and the dense, complex musical scenarios by which he is best known. . . . All the interpretations are as well-crafted as the music.” INDIANAPOLIS STAR

CEDILLE RECORDS 5255 N Lakewood Ave. Chicago IL 60640 tel: 773.989.2515 fax: 773.989.2517 1 [email protected] www.cedillerecords.org 1