Carter: Sonata for Cello and Piano Sonata

Track Listings

1. Sonata for cello & piano Composed by Elliott Carter with Bernard Greenhouse, Anthony Makas

2. Piano Sonata No. 1 Composed by Elliott Carter with Beveridge Webster

3. Fantasy Pieces, for piano Composed by David Del Tredici with George Bennette

4. Portrait for piano Composed by Robert Helps with George Bennette

5. Serenade No. 10 for flute & harp, Op. 79 Composed by Vincent Persichetti with Samuel Baron, Ruth Maayani

Editorial Reviews
Album Description
This is truly a compilation of American Masters. Exploring the chamber music of 4 of Americas most noteworthy. In this 90th birthday year of Mr. Carter, these formidable performances of the Cello Sonata and the Piano Sonata by no less than Bernard Greenhouse and Beveridge Webster are considered by many the definitive performances. Rounding out the program are works by David Del Tredici, together with works by the brilliant pianist/composer Robert Helps and one of America's most substantial but overlooked composers, Vincent Persichetti.

Carter: Sonata for Cello and Piano Sonata, Music, Bernard Greenhouse, Elliott Carter, David Del Tredici, Robert Helps, Vincent Persichetti, Samuel Baron, Ruth Maayani, Anthony Makas, Beveridge Webster, George Bennette, 20th/21st Century Sonata/Sonatina for Keyboard, Cello with Keyboard, Chamber, Chamber Music, Character/Single-Movement/Miscellaneous Work for Keyboard, Keyboard, Music for Keyboard

Elliott Carter: Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello & Harpsichord; Sonata for Cello & Piano; Double Concerto for Harpsichor
Average customer rating:

like listening to barbed wire (double concerto)very good(cello sonata)

3 Carter masterpieces

A good place to start with Carter

An outstanding introduction to a contemporary music giant

The Essential Elliott Carter

Elliott Carter: Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello & Harpsichord; Sonata for Cello & Piano; Double Concerto for Harpsichor

Manufacturer: Nonesuch
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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Elliott Carter: A Symphony of Three Orchestras; Varèse: Deserts; Ecuatorial; Hyperprism

ASIN: B000005IZ1
Release Date: 1992-03-24

Tracks:

Sonata For Flute, Oboe, Cello & Harpischord: Risoluto
Sonata For Flute, Oboe, Cello & Harpischord: Lento
Sonata For Flute, Oboe, Cello & Harpischord: Allegro
SONATA FOR CELLO & PIANO: Moderato
SONATA FOR CELLO & PIANO: Vivace, molto leggiero
SONATA FOR CELLO & PIANO: Adagio
SONATA FOR CELLO & PIANO: Allegro
Double Concerto For Harpischord & Piano With Two Chamber Orchestras: Introduction
Double Concerto For Harpischord & Piano With Two Chamber Orchestras: Cadenza For Harpischord
Double Concerto For Harpischord & Piano With Two Chamber Orchestras: Allegro scherzando
Double Concerto For Harpischord & Piano With Two Chamber Orchestras: Adagio
Double Concerto For Harpischord & Piano With Two Chamber Orchestras: Presto
Double Concerto For Harpischord & Piano With Two Chamber Orchestras: Cadenzas For Piano
Double Concerto For Harpischord & Piano With Two Chamber Orchestras: Coda

Customer Reviews:

like listening to barbed wire (double concerto)very good(cello sonata).......2005-10-08

The Double Concerto begins promisingly enough with mysterious percussion rustlings from which string tremelos emerge,soon echoed by the solo piano and harpsichord.All this has undoubted poetry but it has to be said,returning to the piece after some ten years that grasping the whole is pretty tricky and the climactic moments (track14!) are somewhat akin to listening to barbed wire.For all Carter's harmonic formulations(or perhaps because of) the pitch content often sounds rather lifeless,it's as if there's no centre of any kind.Yes,the various skitterings of the two soloists are enjoyable but i can't imagine this piece ever being taken up in a big way.
The cello sonata is the best piece on the disc.The rhetoric is more conventional than the concerto,even neo-classical and Carter is on much more sure territory here:There's a fantastic jazz-like swing to the second movement and the opening moderato with the mechanical ticking on the piano accompanying the passionate cello is one of Carter's most inspired creations.

3 Carter masterpieces.......2005-10-01

The Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello and Harpsichord is immediately appealing. Carter's signature complex crossrhythms are present but they are delightfully airy and not at all forbidding. This is an excellent place to start your exploration of Carter's vast and imaginative work. The Cello Sonata is also quite accessible . It's a big and exciting piece. The Double Concerto is another matter! It took me many listenings before I really started enjoying it but it was worth the effort. These performances are thrilling.

A good place to start with Carter.......2004-05-17

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.

An outstanding introduction to a contemporary music giant.......2004-01-11

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.

The Essential Elliott Carter.......2001-02-18

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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Carter for Novices
superb and committed playing

Early Chamber Music of Elliott Carter

Manufacturer: Cedille
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Quartets | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

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Elliott Carter: The Complete music for Piano

ASIN: B00002R166
Release Date: 1999-11-19

Album Description

This CD of Elliott Carter's adventurous early chamber music is designed to appeal to newcomers, as well as aficionados of this renowned contemporary American composer. "Early Chamber Music of Elliott Carter stands out amid Carter CDs because it's accessible from beginning to end," says producer Jim Ginsburg. "The selections are certainly substantial enough to appeal to the composer's hard-core fans, but without discouraging the uninitiated." The pieces, from 1945 to 1950, are "early" in the body of work that made Carter (b. 1908) famous, not the products of a novice composer. The beginnings of Carter's signature style are evident in these works. "Both musically and chronologically, they occupy a tantalizing middle ground between wartime populism and postwar modernism," Stephen Heinemann writes in the booklet notes. Carter's lyrical, aptly named Pastoral for clarinet and piano is reminiscent of Copland, and even Bernstein. Carter has described it as "quite an individual piece." Of particular interest is how the second theme evolves from the preceding material rather than entering in contrast to it. Carter's Woodwind Quintet presents jaunty themes, propelled by jazz syncopations. Carter says he "attempted to individualize each instrument, assigning a different character to each one, and that procedure anticipates some of my later writing." His breakthrough work, the powerfully dramatic Sonata for Cello and Piano, maps out innovations Carter has continued to pursue for more than fifty years. "It is a work of moderate length and astonishing breadth, dramatic in its presentation and novel in its form," Heinemann writes. Eight Etudes and a Fantasy for woodwind quintet are a set of ingenious miniatures exploring different compositional devices, culminating in a brilliant fugue. Carter's trademark technique of "metric modulation" (not the composer's term), a seamless, systematically controlled change of tempo, is clearly audible in the Fantasy.

Customer Reviews:

Carter for Novices.......2003-05-26

Whenever someone wants to scare away a conservative music lover, one of the sure ways to do it is to mention the name of Elliot Carter. Carter, the grand old man of 20th century American composition, has become synonymous with dense, atonal and highly academic East Coast American writing. But before Carter became, Carter the Forbidding, he was an American modernist in the Copland tradition. This beautifully performed CD illustrates some of the composer's first steps in the transition from populist (a jacket that never completely fit) to arch-modernist. It is a fascinating journey indeed.

The earliest work on the disc is the Pastoral for Clarinet and Piano. This piece is lovely, though not particularly original. Basically tonal, the piece is a lyrical study for the clarinet, which is surrounded by some marvelous "bell" chords in the piano. The idiom is 1940s American populist, right out of Copland. The slightly older Copland really exerted a powerful influence on Carter, partly because of Copland's enormous popularity. But no matter how lovely the Pastoral is, it is obviously a derivative work and one that does not point to the mature mastery Carter would show in the 50s and 60s. The same could be said for the Woodwind Quintet. This is also a lovely two movement work, not particularly "Americana" in sound, but definitely showing the influence of Copland, Harris, Diamond and the like. The work is excellently crafted and thoroughly enjoyable, if not particularly original. You might think of it as the best Woodwind Quintet that Copland never wrote.

The remaining works on the disc are something quite different. The most impressive is the justly famous Cello Sonata. This work is a marvel, completely modernist and without a trace of another composer. Though it is not atonal, it points that way, particularly in the stunning Moderato. It also introduces the first appearance of the justly famous "metric modulation" technique in Carter's rhythmic work. The first movement is a turbulent, brooding Moderato in a rhapsodic style. The second movement is more neoclassical in form, though with adventurous dissonant harmonies in the second theme. The third movement is the emotional heart of the work, brooding and intense. And the final movement is both a stunning conclusion and a wrap around, as it brings back material from the first movement, transformed, but still recognizable. This work is original Carter, bold, emotional, challenging, logically composed...it's perhaps the composer's first true masterpiece and one that I'll be returning to over and over again.

The final work on the disc, the Eight Etudes and a Fantasy for Wind Quartet from 1950 had it's origins in a classroom assignment Carter had given students at Columbia University. Each of the Etudes tackles a different problem in composition and orchestration. In the process of tackling these problems you can hear Carter working out techniques that would come to artistic fruition later that year in the composition of the seminal First String Quartet. In the Etudes you can hear Carter experimenting with textures, tone color shifts, simple harmonic concepts wedded to difficult rhythms, simple melodic concepts wedded to complex textures and a final wedding of all techniques in the final fantasy, which begins in the manner of a fugue but ends up stretching that form to the breaking point. The work on the whole is quite interesting...though intellectually interesting, not emotionally. It must be taken as an academic study. I find the work is one that points toward other later pieces rather than being satisfying in it's own right. But it is a good work to hear nonetheless.

The Chicago Pro Musica is a chamber group derived from members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. They play most all repertoire, but have a special penchant for 20th century music. It is obvious in these terrific performances. The Wind music is impeccably played. Particularly fine is the work of clarinetist John Bruce Yeh who plays with marvelous control and tone. Barbara Haffner is terrific in the Cello Sonata, almost the equal of Joel Krosnick, who is still my favorite cellist in this piece, but only by a nose. Easley Blackwood, a fine composer in his own stead, is terrific in the piano parts, creating a dense foil in the Cello Sonata. This is a CD for anyone interested in the career of Elliot Carter, but it is also a great one for those who imagine that Carter can only write dense and forbidding music. The Cello Sonata alone should show that Carter's dense music can be warm and inviting as well.

superb and committed playing.......2000-04-10

The Chicago Pro Musica are Chicago Symphony players largely instigated and organized by clarinetist John Bruce Yeh. They commission new works as well as playing contemporary repertoire, an idea that never gets off the ground.(Abbado never did it,create a commissioning chamber group during his tenure in Berlin). Yeh is no stranger to contemporary music,he has played all the arduously difficult works involving the clarinet family all his career. He had played Carter's Clarinet Concerto in Chicago under Boulez. This is a nostalgic look back to early Carter, and we find the Eastern lyrical values, as in the Pastorale with Yeh. The Cello Sonata was one of Carter's early success, the other being the Piano Sonata. It points to the gruff lyrical power, the long lines and a penchant for adopting fascinating forms. The Cello and Piano are like two soloists going at it, there is a sense of accompaniment, but it engages more a sense of foreground and background. The sense of lyricism and expressionist gesture are prevalent as well. The Wind ensemble pieces here as well reveals Carter's penchant for interesting musical forms, like an etude on a single tone,shifting its timbre as the minimal means of development, or fugal ideas that involve the use of timbre rather than predetermined entrances.

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Carter in Europe

Elliott Carter: Homages & Dedications
Elliot Carter , Spanjaard , and Nieuw Ensemble
Manufacturer: Disques Montaigne
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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Tristan Murail: Gondwana; Désintégrations; Time and Again

ASIN: B0000C8WXM
Release Date: 2004-01-20

Tracks:

Luimen 'For The Nieuw Ensemble' (1997) For Mandolin, Guitar, Harp, Vibraphone, Trumpet And Trombone
Scrivo In Vento 'For Robert Aitken' (1991) For Flute
Con Leggerezza Pensosa - Omaggio A Italo Calvino (1990) For Clarinet, Violin And Cello
Changes 'For David Starobin' (1983) For Guitar
Esprit Rude, Esprit Doux II 'For Pierre Boulez' (1994) For Flute, Clarinet, Violin And Cello
Bariolage 'For Ursula Holliger' (1992) For Harp
Inner Song 'For Heinz Holliger' In Memory Of Stefan Wolpe (1992) For Oboe
Immer Neu 'For Ursula And Heinz Holliger' (1992) For Harp And Oboe
Gra 'For Witold Lutoslawski' (1993) For Clarinet
Enchanted Preludes 'For Ann Santen's Birthday' (1988) For Flute And Cello
90+ 'For Goffredo Petrassi' (1994) For Piano
Canon For 4 - Homage To William 'For Sir William Glock' (1984) For Flute, Bass Clarinet, Violin And Cello

Customer Reviews:

Carter in Europe.......2006-06-28

Though Elliott Carter's music has often found greater acceptance within modernism-friendly Europe rather than at home, many of his most distinguished interpreters (particularly on record) have been American musicians. By contrast, this disc has a distinctly European flavour, with members of the Dutch group Nieuw Ensemble playing ten works, including one dedicated to them.

The two most weighty works on the disc are Luimen and Trilogy. Luimen (roughly meaning 'whimsical moods') is a sextet for the unusual combination of mandolin, guitar, harp, vibraphone, trumpet and trombone, and was written for the performers on this disc. It's a delightful piece, written with a very light touch as it swings from one mood to another. There is a previous recording by Speculum Musicae, which I slightly prefer due to its greater intensity, but the more relaxed feel of this reading suits the music very well too.

Trilogy, for oboe and harp, was written for Heinz and Ursula Holliger. As the title would suggest, it's in three movements: Bariolage for solo harp, Inner Song (an elegy for Stephan Wolpe) for solo oboe, and Immer Neu for both instruments. As with Luimen, it's amongst the most charming of Carter's later works, the harp part full of unusual sounds and techniques, the oboe solo a beautiful lament, and the finale a witty, conversational dialogue. As the Holligers' performance is no longer available, this reading will do very nicely as a replacement (even if it doesn't supersede the original).

The rest of the pieces on the disc are rather slighter. Scrivo in vento is a flute solo which alternates slow, lyrical music in the lower range of the instrument with shrieks and cries at the top of its range, while Con leggerezza pensosa, for clarinet, violin and cello, pays homage to Italo Calvino's writings with rapidly shifting moods. Changes is a delightful solo guitar work that never stays in the same mood for more than a few moments, while Esprit rude, esprit doux II, for flute, clarinet and marimba, celebrates Pierre Boulez's 80th birthday and the two sides of his personality--generous and irascible.

Gra, a homage to Witold Lutoslawski, is a vivacious solo clarinet piece (practically a repertory work now, too), while the charming Enchanted Preludes is a witty dialogue between flute and cello with a joyous close. 90+ celebrates the 90th birthday of Goffredo Petrassi with 90 bars of contrasting pianistic styles...then refuses to quit, while the not-as-austere-as-you'd-expect Canon for 4 is a hommage to BBC radio controller Sir William Glock, for the typically Carterian combination of flute, bass clarinet, violin and cello.

This isn't an absolutely essential Carter disc--unless you don't have another recording of Trilogy--but it's hard to see any lovers of this composer's music being disappointed by it. I know I enjoyed it.

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A classic version of Piazzolla's Le Grand Tango

Le Grand Tango: Music of Latin America

Manufacturer: Helicon Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

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Cello, Celli!
Le Grand Tango Dances

ASIN: B000005BIQ
Release Date: 1997-10-29

Tracks:

Astor Piazzolla: Escualo (Tango)
Saudades do Brasil: Corcovado
Saudades do Brasil: Ipanema
Milonga en Re (Tango)
Saudades do Brasil: Copacabana
Saudades do Brasil: Gavea
Le Grand Tango
Estrellita
Rhapsody For Violoncello And Piano: Pampanea #2
Sonata For Violoncello And Piano op.49: Allegro deciso
Sonata For Violoncello And Piano op.49: Adagio passionato
Sonata For Violoncello And Piano op.49: Presto moroso
Sonata For Violoncello And Piano op.49: Allegro con fuoco

Amazon.com

Carter Brey, who recently tied himself down to the position of principal cellist of the New York Philharmonic, has put together a most entertaining collection of Latin American music (including some excerpts from Milhaud's Saudades do Brasil). The most substantial pieces are Ginastera's Pampeana No. 2 and Cello Sonata, both wonderful. But they don't overshadow some excellent arrangements of Piazzolla tangos, which are fine music too. With prize-winning pianist Christopher O'Riley, Brey turns in scintillating performances of all this music, giving us a collection that is as stimulating as it is entertaining. The recording is fine, the price reasonable. --Leslie Gerber

Customer Reviews:

A classic version of Piazzolla's Le Grand Tango.......2000-06-21

Piazzolla's Le Grand Tango, which gives its name to the album, was one of his masterpieces. It has now been recorded more than half a dozen times. Easily the best are the Brey-O'Riley version heard on this record, and the performance recorded by Rostropovich (to whom the work was dedicated). Carter Brey and Christoper O'Riley really capture the essence of this piece. A superb performance.

The Music of Elliott Carter, Volume Five - Nine Compositions (1994-2002)

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Carter continues to impress
Fantastic from the first piece
Vive le Carter!

The Music of Elliott Carter, Volume Five - Nine Compositions (1994-2002)

Manufacturer: Bridge
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Duets | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

Quartets | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

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The Music of Elliott Carter, Vol. 1: Vocal Works (1975-1981)

ASIN: B00009OLTI
Release Date: 2002-06-01

Tracks:

Steep Steps
Two Diversions
Two Diversions
Oboe Quartet
Figment No. 2 (Remembering Mr. Ives)
Au Quai
Of Challenge and of Love
Of Challenge and of Love
Of Challenge and of Love
Of Challenge and of Love
Of Challenge and of Love
Figment No. 1
Retrouvailles
Hiyoku

Album Description

Steep Steps* (2001) Virgil Blackwell, bass clarinet; Two Diversions (1999) Charles Rosen, piano; Oboe Quartet* (2001) Speculum Musicae; Figment No. 2 "Remembering Mr. Ives"* (2001) Fred Sherry, cello; Au Quai* (2002) Maureen Gallagher, viola, Peter Kolkay, bassoon; Of Challenge and of Love (1994) Tony Arnold, soprano; Jacob Greenberg, piano; Figment No. 1 (1994) Fred Sherry, cello; Retrouvailles (2000) Charles Rosen, piano; Hiyoku* (2001) Charles Neidich and Ayako Oshima, clarinets

*Premiere recording

Volume Five of Bridge's ongoing Elliott Carter series contains five premiere recordings, including Carter's bracing Oboe Quartet of 2001. Performed by many of the leading Carter advocates of our time, this recording is a must for those interested in keeping up with the undimmed imagination and constant creative impulse of this American master, now well into his tenth decade. Also featured on this CD is a new recording of Carter's song cycle Of Challenge and of Love, performed by the brilliant young American soprano Tony Arnold, the recent first prize winner of the Gaudeamus International competition for interpreters of contemporary music. Rounding out this CD are a series of instrumental miniatures played by dedicatees Virgil Blackwell, Charles Neidich, Ayako Oshima and Fred Sherry. In addition, the pianist Charles Rosen adds on to his earlier (almost) "Complete Piano Music of Carter" CD (BRIDGE 9090) with the Two Diversions, and Retrouvailles.

Volume one: BRIDGE 9014
Volume two: BRIDGE 9044
Volume three: BRIDGE 9090 (Grammy nomination)
Volume four: BRIDGE 9111 (Grammy nomination)

Customer Reviews:

Carter continues to impress.......2006-06-27

This disc, containing seven short works and two longer ones dating from Carter's late eighties and early nineties, continues Bridge's invaluable series of recordings of works by this modern American master. As with all Bridge's recordings, the performers are almost always musicians with a long history of performing Carter's music (here including the group Speculum Musicae, the cellist Fred Sherry and the pianist Charles Rosen), and this certainly helps to give the performances an authoritative air.

The disc starts with a bang--Carter's bass clarinet solo Steep Steps (so titled because of the importance of leaps of a twelfth in the composition). This is a vigorous and highly enjoyable work that provides an ideal disc opener. More dry are the Two Diversions, two pieces for the advanced piano student. These two works complement each other well; the first simpler, the second rhythmically complex.

The Oboe Quartet is one of Carter's more important recent scores. Written in a single multi-section movement, it alternates between tutti passages and duets for pairs of instruments, and demonstrates (as does much of Carter's recent music) that a strictly atonal style need not reduce a composer's capacity for lyricism. If I'm not sure that Speculum Musicae's performance here quite matches the intensity of Holliger and friends on ECM, this is still a fine reading of a significant work.

The disc then returns to a couple of miniatures. Figment No 2 for solo cello is one of a series of works in which Carter pays homage to musical figures important to him when he was younger, and though there are no obvious stylistic references to Ives, the work does include fragmentary quotations and hints of hymnic writing. Au Quai, by contrast, is a tribute to a composer and conductor who has done so much for Carter's own music--Oliver Knussen, on his 50th birthday. Written for the unusual combination of viola and bassoon, this is a delightful, charming miniature with a wonderfully sense of timing.

Returning to major works, once again, Of Challenge and of Love is one of Carter's many recent song cycles (though the only mature work of his for voice and piano). A setting of five poems by John Hollander, this builds to an expressive climax in the lengthy fourth poem, Quatrains from Harp Lake, before the almost anticlimactic close, End of a Chapter. Having only heard this work though Lucy Shelton's premiere recording on Koch, I found much more warmth in it in this reading, with the fine Tony Arnold the soprano soloist, though I don't think it will ever rank amongst my favourite late Carter works.

The disc ends with three more miniatures. Figment No 1 for solo cello is one of Carter's finest short works, ranging over the whole expressive gamut despite being based entirely on one short idea. Retrouvailles is a brief and comparatively simple (for Carter, at least) study for piano, written for Pierre Boulez's 75th birthday, while Hiyoku, a duet for two clarinets, effectively explores the contrast between the two instruments playing similar and different material.

This is another impressive release in Bridge's Carter series. Lovers of the composer's music will not hesitate to snap it up.

Fantastic from the first piece.......2006-01-22

Carter lets the bass clarinet show off every bit of its range in Steep Steps, from soulful low bass lines, through a smoky lower-midrange area, to an almost sax-like upper register.

All the cellos pieces are great, and the oboe quartet? The other reviewer nailed it; it's like the oboe is playing the lead violin line.

Vive le Carter!.......2003-07-07

The fifth offering in Bridge's indispensible series of the music of Elliott Carter contains nine compositions written from 1994 to 2002, when the composer, incredibly, was between the ages of 85 and 93. There are the usual short gems for various instruments that Carter has made a specialty in recent years. The disk begins with the fascinating "Steep Steps" for solo bass clarinet, an instrument Carter has exploited to great effect in his Piano Concerto and Triple Duo. Fred Sherry delivers a haunting rendition of "Figment No. 2" for solo cello. Subtitled "Remembering Mr. Ives" (Carter first met Ives as a teenager), the piece conveys a nostalgia rare in Carter's work, with short phrases evoking, though not quoting, the kind of hymns Ives used in his music. The Two Diversions for Piano are more transparent than some of Carter's other piano pieces, and rightfully so, since they were written for the Millenium Piano Book for pianists of intermediate skills. Charles Rosen, a long-time Carter champion, provides tender and beautiful readings. Soprano Tony Arnold's rendition of the song cycle "Of Challenge and of Love" seems softer and less forced than Lucy Shelton's premiere recording, which is all to the good, but for me the highlight of the disk is the Oboe Quartet, a major 14-minute work that shows Carter at the top of his instrumental game. Despite its unrepentant modernist idiom, this composition has a classical elegance, a romantic sensuousness, and a Baroque richness of counterpoint that doesn't showcase the soloist as much as make him a first among equals. It is as though the composer had written a new string quartet with the oboe subbing for the first violin. I could not wish for a better performance.
More!

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Amazing CD at a bargain price !
a virtuoso pianist & composer

Introducing Easley Blackwood

Manufacturer: Cedille
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: B00004YLF3
Release Date: 2000-09-19

Album Description

The program includes movements from Blackwood's Clarinet Sonata, Op. 31; Twelve Microtonal Etudes; and String Quartet No. 3; movements from Ives' "Concord" Sonata and Elliott Carter's Cello Sonata; and solo piano works by Blackwood, Nielsen, and Casella.

NEW - Special Budget-priced "Cedille Artist" Compilations The four titles in the series showcase the label's most prolific recording artists (Dmitry Paperno, Easley Blackwood, David Schrader, and Patrice Michaels). If you haven't heard these outstanding artists yet, the new, budget-priced Cedille Artist series makes for an easy introduction to these acclaimed, Chicago-based musicians. These generous compilations - all over 70 minutes long - come with many complete works, not just short excerpts. Each is programmed to demonstrate the musician's full range of artistry over a wide variety of music styles.

Customer Reviews:

Amazing CD at a bargain price !.......2003-08-13

Masterful performances and wonderful recordings. There is an abundance of magic on this disc: Artistry , dedication and musical integrity can be felt throughout but in a warm embracing way . You get hit with lots and lots of notes in rapid succession but they are fluid and lyrical and create an impression that remains long after the last note has faded.
Varied and consistently excellent is how I would describe this offering. Very highly recommended. *****

a virtuoso pianist & composer.......2002-02-11

This is a sampling of Easley Blackwood's artistry as pianist and composer. His skill as pianist is remarkable, and he interprets the music of 4 other composers on this disc, as well as 6 of his own compositions. Tracks 4-6, Carl Nielsen's "Three Pieces, Op. 59", out of his "Radical Piano" CD, is great, and in Blackwood's hands sparkles...and the most "modern" selection on this disc, the Moderato from Elliot Carter's "Sonata for Cello and Piano", with Barbara Haffner on cello is another favorite.

His own compositions are wonderful and varied. I especially like the lovely "Seven Bagatelles". Mr. Blackwood is Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago, and he has taught there since '58...he's also one of the founding members of the fabulous Chicago Pro Musica, a group that has done so much for new American classical music.
I first heard Blackwood in his stunning performance of Leonard Bernstein's "Prelude, Fugue and Riffs", on the CD titled "Ebony Concerto" featuring fellow Pro Musica founding member (and extraordinary clarinet virtuoso) John Bruce Yeh, and he's been delighting me with his music ever since.

In The Shadow Of World War II: Cello Sonatas Composed In The Aftermath Of WWII
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In The Shadow Of World War II: Cello Sonatas Composed In The Aftermath Of WWII

Manufacturer: Arabesque Recordings
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

All Works by Carter | Carter, Elliott | ( C ) | Featured Composers, A-Z | Classical | Styles | Music
All Works by Poulenc | Poulenc, Francis | ( P ) | Featured Composers, A-Z | Classical | Styles | Music
All Works by Prokofiev | Prokofiev, Sergei | ( P ) | Featured Composers, A-Z | Classical | Styles | Music
Chamber Music | Forms & Genres | Classical (c.1770-1830) | Historical Periods | Classical | Styles | Music
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In the Shadow of World War I

Brahms: Complete Cello Sonatas; Intermezzi, Op. 117; Trio, Op. 114

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Garrick Ohlsson: Prokofiev; Bartók; Webern; Barber

Shostakovich: The String Quartets

ASIN: B000000T9G
Release Date: 1996-09-01

Tracks:

Son in C, Op 119: Andante grave
Son in C, Op 119: Moderato
Son in C, Op 119: Allegro ma non troppo
Son for Pno and Vc: Allegro-Tempo di Marcia
Son for Pno and Vc: Cavatine
Son for Pno and Vc: Ballabile
Son for Pno and Vc: Finale
Son for Vc and Pno: Moderato
Son for Vc and Pno: Vivace, molto leggiero
Son for Vc and Pno: Adagio
Son for Vc and Pno: Allegro

Amazon.com

This disc is organized around the intriguing fact that during the one-year period from late 1948 to 1949, by odd coincidence, three important figures in twentieth century music just happened to compose cello sonatas. The three composers Poulenc, Prokofiev, and Carter, for their differences, were all experiencing the aftermath of World War II--and this reality is observable in these works. Prokofiev's sonata breathes free and is more lyrical than much of his output; the Poulenc is playful. The Carter is a different story, as the young composer was just sewing his musical oats at the time. Gilbert Kalish and Joel Krosnick have been performing together for decades, and it shows in the easy rapport they enjoy in the music. --Gwendolyn Freed

Carter: Sonata for Cello and Piano Sonata

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Carter: Sonata for Cello and Piano Sonata

Manufacturer: Phoenix USA
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: B00005YY0A
Release Date: 1998-12-15

Tracks:

Sonata for cello & piano Composed by Elliott Carter with Bernard Greenhouse, Anthony Makas
Piano Sonata No. 1 Composed by Elliott Carter with Beveridge Webster
Fantasy Pieces, for piano Composed by David Del Tredici with George Bennette
Portrait for piano Composed by Robert Helps with George Bennette
Serenade No. 10 for flute & harp, Op. 79 Composed by Vincent Persichetti with Samuel Baron, Ruth Maayani

Album Description

This is truly a compilation of American Masters. Exploring the chamber music of 4 of Americas most noteworthy. In this 90th birthday year of Mr. Carter, these formidable performances of the Cello Sonata and the Piano Sonata by no less than Bernard Greenhouse and Beveridge Webster are considered by many the definitive performances. Rounding out the program are works by David Del Tredici, together with works by the brilliant pianist/composer Robert Helps and one of America's most substantial but overlooked composers, Vincent Persichetti.

Average customer rating:

uncompromisingly incomprehensibly obtuse
Fabulous music by one of America's greatest composers
Fabulous music by one of America's greatest
Great collection by a genuinely colossal figure.
How refreshing such vehement dislike ...

Elliott Carter: Eight Compositions

Manufacturer: Bridge
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Trios | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

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The Music of Elliott Carter, Volume Four

ASIN: B000003GJ2
Release Date: 1994-06-28

Tracks:

Gra - Charles Neidich
Enchanted Prlds - Harvey Sollberger/Fred Sherry
Duo - Rolf Schulte/Martin Goldray
Scrivo In Vento - Harvey Sollberger
Changes - David Starobin
Con Leggerezza Pensosa (Omaggio A Italo Calvino) - Charles Neidich/Rolf Schulte/Fred Sherry
Riconoscenza Per Goffredo Petrassi - Rolf Schulte
Son: Moderato - Fred Sherry/Charles Wuorinen
Son: Vivace, Molto Leggiero - Fred Sherry/Charles Wuorinen
Son: Adagio - Fred Sherry/Charles Wuorinen
Son: Allegro - Fred Sherry/Charles Wuorinen

Amazon.com essential recording

With a full orchestra, Elliott Carter can spread his wings with clangorous grandness. When he goes with a smaller unit, as he does here, he can also do wonderful things--expanding on his tonal and timbral studies with telescoped intensity. This generous 78-minute collection begins in 1993 with Charles Neidich unfurling Gra for the solo clarinet, a piece that rivals anything on the extraordinary Giacinto Scelsi's Complete Works for the Clarinet for breadth and investigative power. Carter, an octogenarian when he wrote Gra, has, this collection shows, been on similar paths since at least 1948, when the CD's closer, Sonata for Violoncello and Piano, came to be. It shows off Carter's proclivity for middle-register grounding and fast outward motion, always tracking toward the unfamiliar and creating electric excitement. As a compendium of one of the greatest American composer's solo and chamber works, Eight Compositions can't be beat. --Andrew Bartlett

Customer Reviews:

uncompromisingly incomprehensibly obtuse.......2004-03-31

If only Carter would write electronic(ELEKTROACOUSMATIK, ELECTROINSTRUKTIVIST) music, instead of torturing those poor violins and violoncellos!(WHICH WERE DESIGNED TO PLAY TONAL MUSIC)....so much of this post-schoenbergian stuff just sounds "NAUGHTY" and "WRONGNOTE-EEE(K !)"...WHEREAS...my ear, at any rate, has a far greater tolerance for the conjunct/disjunct a-melodic spasms of so much current music(s) if elektronik sound generation is used..... unexpected AND UNLIMITED timbres carry no previous associations....so we can accept (AND WELCOME!)48-notes-to-the-octave-scales....as well as toilets flushing in counterpoint with wind chimes, buzzsaws, shakuhachis.......THE PERFORMANCES HERE ARE FULL-OF-FRIGHTENING-FABULOSITY!......AND, MAYBE IF I TAKE THE TIME TO LISTEN TO THIS CD 10 GAZILLION MORE TIMES, I'LL BEGIN TO ACTUALLY GET PLEASURE FROM IT(ALTHOUGH MUSIK/AS/PLEASURE IZ PROBABLY ANATHEMA TO CARTER AND HIS DISCIPLES....WHO PREFER "SERIOUS AND UNCOMPROMISING" STUFF!)...RANT RANT RANT..... yes I'm a composer too and write my share of self-referential elitist effusions.....but STRIVE TO juxtapose complexity with simplicity......without such contrasts, music becomes dry and lifeless.....look what happened to UNCLE IGOR......FIREBIRD/SACRE/PETTROUCHKA/LES NOCES/PULCINELLA/FAIRYS KISS/CAPRICCIO.....all masterpieces....AND THEN HE HAD TO GO INTERNATIONAL AND DILUTE HIS POWER BY WRITING FAKE-BACH AND PANDERING TO THE LIKES OF ROBERT CRAFT....WHO CONVINCED HIM TO BECOME AN ARNOLDWORSHIPPER.....BABBITT HAD THE RIGHT IDEA IN HIS SETTING OF JAMES JOYCES"WING AND A
PRAYER" FOR SOPRANO AND TAPE....A TRUE MEISTERPIECE.....THE ELEKTRONIK BLIP/BLEEPS PERFECTLY COMPLEMENT THE TEXT.....

Fabulous music by one of America's greatest composers.......2004-02-04

This disc is full of some of the most interesting and beautiful compositions by one of American's greatest composers. Every piece is both delightful and challenging, and each rewards repeat listening. Some of these pieces needed some time for me to grow into them, but I very fond of all them now. Others I found to be terrific right away. You mileage may vary!

By the way, the performances are spectacular. It is difficult to imagine the possibility of performances with greater charm and commitment. The players believe in every note, and play it all with superb confidence and musicianship.

Fabulous music by one of America's greatest.......2004-02-04

Great collection by a genuinely colossal figure........2003-07-01

Elliott Carter (b. 1908) is a composer whose music seems to inspire either love or hatred, with little in between. Carter started out studying with Nadia Boulanger in the 1930s, then wrote several years' worth of neo-Copland music before finally finding his own voice in the mid-1940s. Beginning with his Piano Sonata, Carter began writing in an exclusively atonal idiom, constructing works that are breathtaking in their complexity and integrity.

This is not music for the dilettantes who like to play Schubert like muzak when they are cleaning their house or chatting with friends. This is uncompromising, "serious" (often playfully so) music intended for listeners who approach it with the respect it deserves and with the willingness to spend the time required (however long that may be) to appreciate it. If you're looking for instant comprehension, look into [stuff] like "The World's Most Soothing Classical Album" and other corporate delights.

This is a truly invaluable collection, with important works culled from 45 years of Carter's creative development. The earliest work here was written when the composer was 40 and the latest when he was 85, but evident throughout is his daring, originality, extraordinary technique and adherence to his own creative vision. This is beautiful music by virtually any measure. The performances, mostly by the Group for Contemporary Music, are superb. This collection speaks for itself.

Milton Babbitt once asked, "Who cares if you listen?" The point of that notorious essay was that there is now more to music than Tchaikovsky, and that composers have an obligation to themselves and their art and not to close-minded, musically unlettered philistines. Though he wrote that essay in 1958, Babbitt's thesis is unfortunately still valid, as evidenced by the negative, dismissive reviews of Carter's music featured here. If you don't like it, don't listen to it; but don't attack the composer for being a fraud if you won't take the time to familiarize yourself with his music beyond a cursory listen.

How refreshing such vehement dislike ..........2002-02-08

Lloyd Schwartz, in his liner notes to Speculum Musicae's essential recordings of Carter's vocal works (Bridge 9014) writes of his early Frost settings that they are "like the early realistic drawings of a great abstract painter". It would be difficult to come up with a better analogy, not only for Carter's post-1950 compositions but for all works that have willfully surrendered any notion of conventional tonal centers. Tonality in this equation is the equivalent of the figurative in painting. Non tonal works are correspondingly abstract, like the paintings of Pollock or Motherwell: all figurative elements in such works are either accidental or part of a designated encounter of tonal and non tonal aspects (as in Maxwell Davies or the de Koonig of the 'women' series). Now, it is quite clear that, in music as in painting or even dance, there will a number of quite intelligent persons who will never accept the value of abstraction, who think abstract expressionism for instance so much tosh, a Greenbergian legerdemain concocted to brutally anchor american art in the history books as new, valid in its own right, not sub- par europeanism. And it is in fact unfortunate that such progressive art has too often been brandished as an ideological jackhammer, out to bring down the venerable Penn stations of the prevalent taste: this is what happens when true creativity gets ossified in academia. But for those who do not find abstraction anathema, who are as they say adventurous, it should be made clear that all the hyperbolic smoke surrounding Carter is not without fire. He may not be the greatest american composer just like Pollock is hardly the greatest american painter but there are brilliant things to discover here.
This however is not the disc to start with: it's well performed no doubt and the pieces are always interesting if not the best of Carter (except for the cello sonata). Just as it is not really possible to grasp Pollock's 'advance' without a knowledge of what preceded him (as in Kandinsky or the German expressionists: ie, how the figure gets progressively disintegrated and for what reasons) so with Carter (or Schoenberg for that matter) it is best to start with an earlier transitional work like his piano sonato of 1946. It's an astounding piece: Rosen does it well, Jacobs was great, but I favour Watson on Virgin because he choses to program it together with Copland's own monumental sonata and Barber's fighting romanticism. (all these were written in the 40s, an amazing decade for keyboard works: in addition to the above it is also when Dutilleux publishes his luminous and equally transitional sonata). After this, I would move to the cello sonata of '48 on Nonesuch (the better rendering) before taking a deep breath for the plunge into the mind boggling first quartet. (The Composers are the best on Nonesuch; they convey the excitement of discovery. The great Arditti is next and best all round. I find the later Juilliard plodding and too closely recorded for comfort: listen to the crisp page turning throughout). Then, you could turn to the superb Night Fantasies (by Rosen or Oppens) which echo Copland Night thoughts. From there, you're on your own but down forget the vocal pieces: Carter is the premiere reader of American poetry: in addition to Frost and Dickinson, he sets Bishop, Lowell, Ashbery, etc.

A Festive Sunday with William Grant Still

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A Festive Sunday with William Grant Still

Manufacturer: Cambria Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Symphonies | Classical | Styles | Music

Modern & 20th Century | Symphonies | Classical | Styles | Music

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1. Sonata for cello & piano Composed by Elliott Carter with Bernard Greenhouse, Anthony Makas
2. Piano Sonata No. 1 Composed by Elliott Carter with Beveridge Webster
3. Fantasy Pieces, for piano Composed by David Del Tredici with George Bennette
4. Portrait for piano Composed by Robert Helps with George Bennette
5. Serenade No. 10 for flute & harp, Op. 79 Composed by Vincent Persichetti with Samuel Baron, Ruth Maayani