Scorrevole

[I just stumbled across this draft from more than a decade ago, and what the hell, I am going to publish it.]

Over the weekend, I attended an extraordinary event, a two-day extravaganza celebrating the 100th birthday of Elliott Carter, who at that amazing age is still composing great music. Ruth Felt's San Francisco Performances staged this marvel, and thank goodness for that, because the local orchestras and most performing organizations are doing nothing. 

The first day was dedicated primarily to his five string quartets, a body of work the equal of those of  Haydn, Beethoven, and Bartok. In the morning, there was a showing of the documentary film, Elliott Carter: The Labyrinth of Time, followed by a panel/Q&A with the weekend's performers and lecturer Robert Greenberg; in the afternoon, a three-hour lecture; in the evening, a performance of all five of the quartets. 

I can't say enough good things about the film, a most touching and informative document. Filmed in and around Carter's apartment, Greenwich Village, other New York City locations, and Paris, it shows the composer in his element. You see him at his desk, writing music, erasing, writing music, erasing, writing music. You see him working with musicians, including Ursula Oppens, Fred Sherry, and Pierre Boulez. You hear from a few of those musicans as well. He wanders the halls of the building where he studied with Boulanger, and walks across the Brooklyn Bridge. "Aha!" I thought. "That's how he lived to 100: he's a New Yorker who walks five miles a day." He chats with his wife, Helen Jones-Carter, who died in 2003.

Looming over the film, sometimes visible through the windows of the Carter apartment, is the World Trade Center. Carter feels his music is deeply connected with the world and humanity, and talks about his hope that humanity will learn how to solve problems so all humans can live together peacefully. Sometimes you can see the WTC in the distance; sometimes you can't. Sometimes there are shots of the Trade Center in ruins after that day.

You learn a bit about his working methods, and the world he grew up in: "When I was a boy, I could ride my bicycle from 114th street, where we lived, all the way down Manhattan, and see only a few automobiles."

The half-hour panel discussion/Q&A with the performers was, unfortunately, almost the only interactive portion of the weekend. The members of the Pacifica Quartet and pianist Ursula Oppens talked about their experience of learning Carter's music and working with him, and about what it means to them. 

The second day, less taxing, at least for the audience, consisted of a lecture on the piano music, a recital of the complete piano music - well, almost all - and a reception.

Related:

• http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9774
• http://operachic.typepad.com/opera_chic/2008/12/elliott-carter-is-really-old.html
• http://nonesuch.com/journal/happy-100th-birthday-to-elliott-carter

Finale

Courtesy of Boosey & Hawkes

From his web page at Boosey & Hawkes:

Elliott Carter’s final world premiere will take place at Carnegie Hall during the 2014–15 season; the work, The American Sublime, will be performed by the MET Chamber Ensemble under the baton of James Levine.

 It is on a great program that the man himself would have liked a lot:

• STRAVINSKY Octet
• IVES From the Steeples and the Mountains
• IVES Scherzo: Over the Pavements
• CARTER The American Sublime (Word Premiere)
• CAGE Atlas Eclipticalis 
• CHARLES WUORINEN It Happens Like This

The MET Chamber Ensemble
James Levine, Artistic Director and Conductor
Evan Hughes, Bass-Baritone

I'm so happy that there's more Carter to come, and a little sad that a great compositional run will finally be over.

Carter is Still Dead....

...and the Tumblr Fuck Yeah! Elliott Carter gives Daniel Asia's remarks about Carter the shredding they so richly deserve.

Definition of Modernism / Modernist in Concert Music

There's some discussion on David Bratman's recent SFCV Cabrillo review of the term "modernist," after David called Magnus Lindberg a modernist. I dunno, I can't make that fit, largely because I think of modernists as composers who use rigorous formal compositional organizing techniques, or something like that. Serialists, and non-serialists such as Carter, are who I think of as modernists, or at least "high modernists," when it comes to, say, Boulez, Babbitt, Carter, etc. Lindberg certainly isn't in that camp.

Please discuss; all comments welcome.

He's Really Gone.

Elliott Cook Carter, Jr., December 11, 1908 - November 5, 2012, who will not be forgotten during my lifetime.

Alex Ross posts the evidence.

Carter 104

Elliott Cook Carter, Jr., gone but not forgotten. He would have been 104 today.

Here's an excerpt from his gorgeous flute concerto, performed by Emmanuel Pahud and the Berlin Philharmonic:

Carter Obituaries & Blog Postings

There'll be more.

• Allan Kozinn in the NY Times
• Mark Berry (Boulezian)
• Anne Midgette in the WashPost; she has a Classical Beat posting too.
• Joshua Kosman in the Chron
• Alex Ross
• Patty Mitchell (OboeInsight)
• Tim Mangan
• Boosey & Hawkes
• Paul Pelkonnen (Superconductor)
• Joe Barron (Liberated Dissonance)
• Pliable (On an Overgrown Path)
• Tim Rutherford-Johnson is also aggregating obits
• Ivan Hewett in the Guardian
• Ivan Hewett in the Telegraph (really!)
• Mark Swed in the LA Times
• Janos Gereben in SFCV
• Matthew Guerrieri, who links to his own Boston Globe article and blog postings from Carter's centenary year (and who used the same post title I used)
• Lisa Hirsch
• Bruce Hodges, who links to his own article in Seen & Heard International, which is my favorite of all Carter memorials.
• Contrapuntalism, where there's a photo and a quotation
• Steve Hicken, who links to a great deal of his writing about Carter; make sure you check out the series of blog postings about specific Carter works.

Scorrevole

You can't live forever, but I thought Elliott Carter just might. Alas, bowing to the inevitable, the great composer died today at 103, just a few weeks short of his 104rd birthday.

In recent years, I was lucky enough to hear the Pacifica Quartet play all of his string quartets in one astounding program, Ursula Oppens play (almost) the complete piano music the next day, Elizabeth Rowe and the BSO in his gorgeous Flute Concerto, and the premier of a wind piece in NYC. Mr. Carter, frail but still lively - and still composing - was at that program.

Mr. Carter may be gone, but there's more of his music to come: his page at Boosey & Hawkes mentions a premier at the Seattle Symphony in 2013.

There's a ton of Carter on YouTube; listen to Night Fantasies or the Piano Sonata or the Flute Concerto or anything else, and hoist a drink to a life well lived.

Commandeur de la Légion d’Honneur

Congratulation to Elliott Carter, who has been admitted to the Légion d’Honneur! Read the speech (not Carter's) here.

Carter Discussion on WPRB

Received from music writer & blogger Joe Barron -

On Wednesday, July 25, I will appear as the guest on Marvin Rosen's radio program "Classical Discoveries Goes Avant-Garde" on WPRB Princeton. We will be playing and discussing the music of Elliott Carter. Broadcast time is 11 a.m. - 1 p.m. EDT. For those of you in the Princeton area (including Philadelphia), WPRB is at 103.3 on the FM dial. The show may also be heard around the world at WPRB.com, and Marvin archives his shows for a week or so at his own website, classicaldiscoveries.org. 

The playlist will include Carter's String Quartet No. 4 with the Composer's Quartet and the the Concerto for Orchestra with Boulez and the NYPO, as well as some shorter pieces and historic recordings. 

I urge everyone to blow off work and listen.

I'll second that!

This Week in Elliott Carter

Tomorrow night, the NY Phil, under David Robertson, premiers Elliott Carter's new work Two Controversies and a Conversation. Here's a video of Mr. Carter talking about Two Controversies. Wish I could be there, hope I get to hear the piece at some point. (Robertson brings Carter's Variations for Orchestra to SFS next season, yay!)

And the other day, Bloomberg published a nice interview with Mr. Carter. Congrats on the Legion of Honor!

Season Announcement Season: San Francisco Symphony

Yes, yes, I know that I am far behind in reporting on 2012-13 season announcements. Sorry! But the other week when I was home sick, I went through the prospectuses from some of the major presenters. In the process, I marked up a paper calendar with everything I'd like to see - excepting those choruses and new music ensembles that I watch - and oh, man, decisions, decisions.

That said, here's what's up with the San Francisco Symphony season.

Of course, it's not as great as 2011-12, the centennial season, which has been exceptional in the range of music offered. The most obvious lack is in the visiting orchestras. Instead of the American Orchestra series, we get the Russian National Orchestra - with Patrick Summers conducting! - and the Warsaw Phil. The second most obvious lack is in the new music area...but that's par for the course. On the down side, there's a focus on Beethoven...on the up side, at least it's early, rare, and unusual works, mostly. There's plenty to look forward to; I found a good 16 or 17 programs I'd go see, plus I have question marks on a bunch more.

Because of circumstances I can't recall, Semyon Bychkov conducts the first two subscription concerts; I'm passing on the first, but the Shostakovich 7th (Leningrad) is a do-not-miss in my book. A couple of weeks later, MTT has a program of Mahler 5, accompanied by a new work by Samuel Carl (Son-of-John-Coolidge) Adams. (Okay, yes, it has crossed my mind that of all the composers SFS could commission a new work from....it's tough being the composing child of a famous composer, because, yes, people will wonder about it if you land commissions from SFS, Carnegie Hall, and the New World Symphony. No, I have not heard a note of his compositions, so I have no basis for saying whether he is better or worse than any other under-30 composer getting commissions from major symphony orchestras.)

Vassily Petrenko returns with a program I'm hot and cold about: a work by Arvo Part and Bartok's Third Piano Concerto, paired with....Pines of Rome and Fountains of Rome. Um. Leave after the first half?

Vladimir Jurowski debuts with a program of the Rach Second Piano Concerto and an arrangement of Prokofiev's Ivan the Terrible. Another debutant, Jaap van Zweden, has a Wagner/Mozart/Brahms program, which gets a maybe from me. MTT returns with hot and cold running Chinese pianists: Yuja Wang and Lang Lang swap in and out of a program that also has the Rachmaninov Second Symphony and assistant concertmaster Mark Volkert's Pandora, a world premier that I'm especially looking forward to. Then Yefim Bronfman is back with yet another new work, Jorg Widmann's piano concert, which is paired with Symphonie fantastique.

MTT then leads a gorgeous-looking French program that I'll just have to skip unless there's a last-minute substitute in the vocal department. Couldn't we have Sasha Cooke or Susan Graham for those songs instead of you-know-who? Charles Dutoit guests with two programs, of which the second, Poulenc and Berlioz, is the one I'll definitely see. Yan Pascal Tortelier, whom I loved the last time he was here, returns with a Debussy / Strauss / Mendelssohn program - maybe, maybe not, but how often will I get to hear the Strauss Oboe Concerto?

MTT conducts selections from Mozart's unfinished Zaide and Bruckner 7, then leads a Berio / Beethoven PC 4 (Yuja Wang) / Brahms 1 program, followed by Mahler 9. Herbert Blomstadt is here in April and both programs look good, though they're heavy on the Beethoven. Wagner/Lidholm/Beethoven and Beethoven/Nielsen. I suppose I can skip the Beethoven violin concerto if I want. Christoph Eschenbach leads a program of Schoenberg, Brahms, and Dvorak; it's a must-see because Matthias Goerne's presence on the first half.

Then we get the MTT weird-Beethoven concerts. First, a program of the Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus, a Sonatina for Mandolin and Fortepiano (!), the Cantata on the Death of Joseph II, and the Second Symphony (a great and underrated work); second....well, weird stuff, my beloved Fourth Symphony, and a repeat of John Adams's Absolute Jest. I hated it the first time around and am curious to see what I'll think the second.

Lastly, MTT takes another crack at the Missa Solemnis. Good luck! It was a near train-wreck the first time around, in June 2011. It's a great lineup of soloists (Laura Claycomb, Sasha Cooke, Michael Fabiano, and Shenyang), and I seem to recall reading something about visual accompaniment, which gives me the fear. I'll be on hand anyway, giving the visuals the gimlet eye and burying my head in the score.

Marek Janowski returns with a program that I would ordinarily pass on, except that I've never heard the conductor live and I'd like to (Schumann and Brahms). David Robertson has a tasty program and great soloist; Carter's Variations for Orchestra, Ravel Concert for the Left Hand with mighty Marc-Andre Hamelin, Rhapsody in Blue, and La Valse. Juraj Valcuha brings Kodaly (Dances of Galanta), the Dvorak cello concerto (which, alas, I don't like much), and Bartok's Suite from The Wooden Prince, while Kiril Karabits conducts a don't-miss program of Honegger's Pacific 231, the Britten Double Concerto (Barantschik and Vinocour), and Silbelius First (didn't I just hear that? Yes, I did).

Roberto Abbado shoehorns one new work, by Ivan Fedele, among Schumann and Schubert, then MTT has two programs celebrating the hundredth birthday of Le Sacre du Printemps: Rite plus Agon and the Violin Concerto (Shaham) and Rite plus Renard, some songs, and Les Noces. Woo hoo!

The season closes with West Side Story.

Minor Update: Compose Your Own subscriptions go on sale June 19. I'm hoping this year will be less painful than last.

This Can't Go On Forever...

but one can hope it will continue for a while:

CONTACT!  

THE NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC’S NEW-MUSIC SERIES
Season’s Second Program To Feature WORLD PREMIERE of  ELLIOTT CARTER’s Two Controversies and a Conversation,U.S. PREMIERE of MICHAEL JARRELL’s NACHLESE Vb: Liederzyklus,
And PIERRE BOULEZ’s ... explosante-fixe …  

Friday, June 8, 2012, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Saturday, June 9, 2012, at Peter Norton Symphony Space  

DAVID ROBERTSON To Conduct Both Concerts
WNYC’s JOHN SCHAEFER To Host June 8 Performance 

(emphasis mine. No, I have no idea why MD Alan Gilbert isn't conducting this program.)

Carter 103

Elliott Carter turns 103 today. The birthday party for him at the 92nd St. Y the other day included several works he wrote in the last year, two from just last month. And this week I was lucky enough to hear the marvelous Elizabeth Rowe and the Boston Symphony in his Flute Concerto, a masterpiece and a superb addition to the flute repertory. Read Joe Barron's lovely tribute to the composer here.

Happy birthday, Mr. Carter! Looking forward to whatever is coming from your pen in your 104th year.

Carter in the Times

I wish the Times had run a happy birthday editorial yesterday, but whatever; here's their coverage:

• Dan Wakin's story/interview, with photos taken at Carnegie Hall and at Carter's apartment. 
• Anthony Tommasini's concert review; he liked Interventions.

Archives

I received a press release from Boosey & Hawkes last week about Steve Reich's papers, which are going to live in Switzerland:

The Paul Sacher Foundation has entered into an agreement with the American composer Steve Reich (b. 1936) to take over his musical archive. The working papers of this internationally renowned artist will shortly be made accessible to scholars at the Foundation's premises in Basel.

The Steve Reich Collection at the Paul Sacher Foundation covers the composer's entire oeuvre, from his dodecaphonic early works to his very latest creations, such as Daniel Variations (2006) and Double Sextet (2007). In addition to letters, sound recordings, manuscripts from various stages in the creative process, and other documents, special importance attaches to his many audio and program files, which capture various working layers in the music of a composer to whom computers, synthesizers, and samplers have long been standard compositional tools.

The Paul Sacher Foundation holds a remarkable collection of composer archives, including those of Bartok, Berio, Sorabji, Webern, Varese, Ligeti, Birtwhistle, Kurtag, Ferneyhough....is your jaw on the floor yet? Read the whole list, which includes some prominent performers as well as composers, here.

I feel the slightest bit sad about Reich's papers going overseas, as I also feel a bit sad to see Elliott Carter's name on the list. They are New York composers and American composers, and I can't help but wish that there were a place for their papers in the U.S., at the Morgan or NYPL, or the Smithsonian, or the Library of Congress. Very likely there isn't the money to fund the acquisition - I assume the Sacher pays, rather than simply accepting donations. I am grateful that the papers will be preserved in a proper archive, and kept together for study, of course, especially given the possible alternatives.

Carter 100!

Best wishes to Elliott Carter, dean of American composers, on this auspicious day, and may he have a good number more happy, healthy, years of composing masterworks.

Playlist: why, the Pacifica Quartet's new disk of 1 and 5, of course. I'll get my account of this past weekend's festivities posted some time today.

Elliott Carter on Charlie Rose?!

Just hours in advance of his 100th birthday, Elliott Carter appears on Charlie Rose tonight, along with James Levine and Daniel Barenboim, in what must be some kind of first. Or maybe two kinds of firsts.

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.

Cartermania

Over at listen101, Steve Hicken is running a fine series of postings leading up to Elliott Carter's 100th birthday on December 11. Each posting discusses a work of Carter's that has been particularly important to Steve and his development as a composer. Start here.

And at Soho the Dog, Matthew Guerrieri has posted a link to his Boston Globe interview with Carter and material that didn't make it into the Globe.

My unasked question for Carter: what did the Harvard campus look like in the 1920s that brought up the worry that building dormitories would ruin it? And get that story about Carter's visit to the White House and his little exchange with Leontyne Price.

I will have something to say, I hope, at the end of the Carter Centenary Celebration here in San Francisco.