21 series) - Oliver Knussen

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Composed by Elliott Carter at the ripe old age of 84 and debuted in 1998 (a time when the composer was more prolific than ever), Symphonia could be one of the contemporary music maverick's grandest works to date. In about 45 minutes, the piece--inspired by the 17th-century poem Bulla by Richard Crenshaw--sonically mimics an airborne bubble, bouncing from one environment to the next until--you guessed it--it's gone for good. The opening movement, Partita, swings between atmospheric string passages and sharp clusters of percussion and brass. The second, Adagio tenebroso, is a melancholy cauldron (and the composition's darkest moment), and Allegro scorrevole, the finale, is where the composer pulls out all the stops and creates even more sharp contrasts, which gradually make the bubble (one can assume) explode. Even in its atonal and ragged state, there's a gorgeous poetry at work here. 1996's Clarinet Concerto is an added bonus, a composition where the lone clarinet part threads its way through various instrumentations (and themes), creating an unexpected, but delightful ending. Throughout these atmospheric and challenging works, the London Sinfonietta and the BBC Symphony Orchestra deliver remarkable performances. A great pairing of world premieres. --Jason Verlinde

Elliott Carter: Symphonia: Sum Fluxae Pretium Spei (1993-96) / Clarinet Concerto (1996) (20/21 series) - Oliver Knussen, Music, Elliott Carter, Oliver Knussen, Michael Collins, London Sinfonietta, BBC Symphony Orchestra, 20th/21st Century Symphony, Clarinet Concerto, Classical, Classical Composers, Classical Music, Concerto, Orchestral & Symphonic, Symphonic

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

A massive orchestral piece coupled with a spritely concerto, both skillfully written

Great Performance - Excellent Piece

gradus ad parnassum

Overrated and frankly Unmusical

Carter: A performer's music

Elliott Carter: Symphonia: Sum Fluxae Pretium Spei (1993-96) / Clarinet Concerto (1996) (20/21 series) - Oliver Knussen
Elliott Carter , Oliver Knussen , Michael Collins , London Sinfonietta , and BBC Symphony Orchestra
Manufacturer: Deutsche Grammophon
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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Clarinet | Reeds & Winds | Instruments | Classical | Styles | Music
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ASIN: B00000JSAJ
Release Date: 2000-01-11

Tracks:

Clarinet Concerto: Scherzando
Clarinet Concerto: Deciso
Clarinet Concerto: Tranquillo
Clarinet Concerto: Presto
Clarinet Concerto: Largo
Clarinet Concerto: Giocoso
Clarinet Concerto: Agitato
Symphonia: Sum Fluxae Pretium Spei: I. Partita
Symphonia: Sum Fluxae Pretium Spei: II. Adagio tenebroso
Symphonia: Sum Fluxae Pretium Spei: III. Allegro scorrevole

Amazon.com

Composed by Elliott Carter at the ripe old age of 84 and debuted in 1998 (a time when the composer was more prolific than ever), Symphonia could be one of the contemporary music maverick's grandest works to date. In about 45 minutes, the piece--inspired by the 17th-century poem Bulla by Richard Crenshaw--sonically mimics an airborne bubble, bouncing from one environment to the next until--you guessed it--it's gone for good. The opening movement, Partita, swings between atmospheric string passages and sharp clusters of percussion and brass. The second, Adagio tenebroso, is a melancholy cauldron (and the composition's darkest moment), and Allegro scorrevole, the finale, is where the composer pulls out all the stops and creates even more sharp contrasts, which gradually make the bubble (one can assume) explode. Even in its atonal and ragged state, there's a gorgeous poetry at work here. 1996's Clarinet Concerto is an added bonus, a composition where the lone clarinet part threads its way through various instrumentations (and themes), creating an unexpected, but delightful ending. Throughout these atmospheric and challenging works, the London Sinfonietta and the BBC Symphony Orchestra deliver remarkable performances. A great pairing of world premieres. --Jason Verlinde

Customer Reviews:

A massive orchestral piece coupled with a spritely concerto, both skillfully written.......2006-08-28

This Deutsche Grammophon disc, an installment of the "20/21" series of contemporary music recordings, contains two works by the great American modernist Elliott Carter which he embarked upon well into his 80s. Oliver Knussen leads the London Sinfonietta and clarinettist Michael Collins in the concerto, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the "Symphonia".

Carter's music is controversial, as a glimpse at reviews here would reveal, but I found the works here far from harsh and abrasive. Most of the soundworld isn't too different from that of well-regarded figures like Lutoslawski or the early Lindberg. While it's understandable that fans of earlier eras of art music would find Carter not their cup of tea, there's nothing here that should evoke a violent reaction. It's certain tuneful; for fans of contemporary music, there's a lot of truly catchy material here that will stay with you long after the disc comes to an end.

So what's Carter's approach? He is fascinated by the idea of polytempos where two lines start off at the same pace, but eventually one appears the slower and the other the faster. The liner notes compare it to seeing two pendulums start off swinging, but one winds down before the other. This is a concept of great possibilities which gives the music many angles from which to view the action. If one wants to hear a less uncomprimisingly modernist use of the technique, I could recommend Per Norgard's "Concerto in due tempi" (on a Chandos disc with his masterpiece Symphony No. 3), but if this piques your interest, Elliott Carter's music is very much worth hearing.

The massive "Symphonia: Sum Fluxae Pretium Spei" (1993-1996) is Carter's largest orchestral work, loosely based on Richard Crashaw's poem "Bulla" where artistic inspiration is compared to a bubble. "I am the prize of flowing hope." As he began work on the piece when was 85 years old, he wasn't sure he would live to complete it, and so he wrote its three sections for independent commissions before finally tying them all together. The opening "Partita" is, as its title indicates, playful where various portions of the orchestra contend in sport. Here various themes appear again and again, but they're never quite repeated. The second movement, "Adagio tenebroso", is like night to the first movement's day. A dark series of brooding landscapes, some have seen in this movement a meditation on all of the 20th century's horrors. The final "Allegro scorrevole" returns us to sunnier territory, with a general wispiness and scintillating percussion, something like a more unhinged version of Ligeti's "Melodien". Carter's orchestral writing is exciting, as he really explores all possibilities of the ensemble, just listen to the big chord that opens up "Symphonia", played on both extremely low registers and the very highest.

The "Clarinet Concerto" (1996) introduces, of course, a soloist, but it also displays a new concept in Carter's use of the orchestra: breaking it up into small, semi-autonomous units. Here the players are organized on the stage into six individual groups, such as piano, harp, and pitched percussion in one, unpitched percussion in another, and so forth. The first six movements of the concerto highlight each of these groups in turn, making for an intimate feel and a shifting series of partners in conversation for the soloist. The clarinet writing is often light, airy, and fleet-footed, a strong contrast to an orchestra that can't quite move so freely.

The liner notes are excellent. They contain the full text of Crashaw's poem "Bulla" in its original Latin and in translation, a description of the pieces by critic Bayan Northcott, and some remarks by Oliver Knussen that sketch Carter's biography and general aesthetic. All in all, this is a very entertaining disc for fans of modernism.

Great Performance - Excellent Piece.......2006-06-08

I enjoyed Symphonia very much and I am getting hooked to listening to it again and again. The Clarinet Concerto was not too bad and perhaps my only complaint is the recording. There are certain moments when I wish I can hear more of the solo instrument but it is overpowered by the orchestra. If that was a harp concerto, I wouldn't say a word, but an instrument of such a vigorous dynamic control shouldn't be overpowered that easily.

All in all, I am very happy with my CD and will listen to it on and on!

Danny

gradus ad parnassum.......2006-05-26

The Symphonia is pure music at its most pure...in short: words fail. Carter, along with other contemporary composers of what is unfortunately termed atonal music (with this pejorative is the built in but incorrect assumption that consonance and dissonance are not bound by period and by cultural factors) is often criticized for writing alienating mathematical music (don't even get me started about the notion that math and music are one in the same. It simply isn't true). And this music IS complex, but it is also most rewarding. It wants a patient listener. It wants a listener without expectations about what music "should be like". Such a listener will, with familiarity, find a unique and a real beauty. He will discover, in fact, the Sublime.

Overrated and frankly Unmusical.......2006-05-09

I have studied modern composition and have learned the hard fact that Carter's music might be good for an analysis class but it's just NOT musical.Surely that is what is important.
I am baffled he is so highly rated-the general public this time are right in not liking it.Carter's music is actually very unmusical and also plain dull as a previous reviewer said.He is highly skilled at orchestation but so what.I am no great fan of atonal music but Ives(who he admires)at least was very MUSICAL-Carter is not.
How does he expect the public to like it when even composition students don't get it(Babbitt and Stockhausen are even more extreme examples of music turning into a scientific exercise).It's no wonder contemporary music concerts are low in numbers when they're doing this stuff-I would'nt go and I have studied it!!
It's about time he and others like Babbitt(don't tell me that is good music!),Stockhausen,and Maxwell Davies are finally seen for what they are and not put on a pedestal by major orchestras-very clever note manipulators who just ain't musical.Stravinsky was a clever note manipulator BUT was always naturally musical-even in his serial music.

Carter: A performer's music.......2005-06-29

As a composer I have respect for Carter's music: his meticulous rendering of notation, his seeing through a musical vision and committing it to paper, his challenging a performer's idea of ensemble and rendition. But I don't like the music much, either live or on recording. In a live performance it's stimulating to watch a performer's committment to a work of Carter's; and if the work is an ensemble piece, to watch and hear the performers managing the complex musical lines governed by an invisible pulse. Unfortunately, the visable is lost on a recording. But either way, the resulting harmony for me is dull. The musical intervals are dull. Carter is the least sensual of composers because his harmony is rarely felt vertically. In lieu of a 'sound' palette within a complete chromatic spectrum - the stressing of pure sound over pitches to compensate for the lack of tonality - the pitches themselves become all-important. These pitches and the strands of musics and conflicting tempi are the sound of Carter. Harmony is fragmentary, often uneventful.

Another problem I have with Carter's music is his ability to sustain these musical events, or musical discourses, with little recourse to repetition. There is a strong philosophical bent to his music. The simultaneity of events in Time, the rapidity of events, the slowness of events, the different human characteristics in Time - all of this is reflected in his music. But there is repetition in life as well. Repetition is avoided in much of Carter, leaving the listener in a perpetual state of anxiousness. With so much information going on simultaneously, so much musical interest moving constantly forward, the music tends to cancel itself out. A dullness sets in. (In the music of Ives, a tremendous influence on Carter, one can hear different tempi of melodic strands and rhythms occuring simultaneously, but one or two are often recognizable by musical quotation of familiar tunes, or tunes that feel familiar.) Perhaps music is not the most appropriate media for such philosophical musings.

As for the disc in question, I am not entirely convinced that the Symphony works as a whole. Apparently the movements were composed independently of each other, with the intention of uniting them later. One can hear an attempt at harmonic and rhythmic cross-referencing between the movements, but the impression is half-bait. More successful is the diverse character of the movements themselves: The first muscular and energetic, the second slow and somber, the third light and quick. But undermining this is a tendency for each movement to reach it's musical climax near the end, increasing the suspicion that the movements were originally thought of as independent works. (After favoring the idea of the one-movement form in his instrumental works for decades, Carter has returned to the varied movement form since the late 80's.)

The Concerto for Clarinet is more successful in that the varied movements are tied together as a whole. The clarinet part is virtuosic, impovisational, with an air of jazz about it.

All of the performances are, I'm sure, exemplary. Oliver Knussen, the conductor, is a well-known admirer of Carter.

In the end, I feel that Carter's music appeals more to the performer than to the listener. He has said himself that the perfomer or performers are utmost in his mind. I am sure that there are listeners fascinated by his music for purely musical reasons; but many, if they had to hear it, would rather 'see' it performed live, or not at all.

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