Tuesday, December 09, 2008

More Carter!

While Bay Area symphonies merrily ignore Elliott Carter's very big round number birthday, East Coast audiences have had plenty to listen to. First, the magnificent tribute at Tanglewood, where the students played forty-seven (47!) Carter pieces in a huge multiconcert tribute this past summer. Read Matthew Guerrieri's Magna Carter series for a marvelous account of the festivities.

The New York Philharmonic will have a Day of Carter on Saturday, Dec. 13; the day includes a talk with the composer and the world premiere of a new work, Poems of Louise Zukovfky, for soprano (Lucy Shelton) and clarinet (Stanley Drucker, in his valedictory season at the NYPO). It's at the tiny Kaplan Penthouse space, which seats many fewer people than the Yerba Buena Center's Forum space. If you don't have tickets...

Possibly best of all, the Boston Symphony plays Carnegie Hall on the composer's birthday, under adopted New Yorker James Levine. The program features the local premier of yet another new Carter work, Interventions for solo piano and orchestra and includes the work that convinced Carter he wanted to be a composer, Le Sacre du printemps, which I presume needs no introduction. See the BSO web site for more Carter goodies.

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