Carter: Late Works Pierre-Laurent Aimard, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group & Oliver Knussen

• Elliott Carter (1908 - 2012): Late Works:
• 1 Interventions 17:09
• 2 Dialogues 13:05
• 3 Dialogues II 04:30
• 4 Soundings 08:12
• 2 Controversies and a Conversation:
• 5 2 Controversies and a Conversation: No. 1, Controversy I 01:44
• 6 2 Controversies and a Conversation: No. 2, Controversy II 01:55
• 7 2 Controversies and a Conversation: No. 3, Conversation 06:46
• 8 Instances 07:11
• Epigrams:
• 9 Epigrams: I. — 01:09
• 10 Epigrams: II. — 01:40
• 11 Epigrams: III. — 00:56
• 12 Epigrams: IV. — 01:17
• 13 Epigrams: V. — 01:12
• 14 Epigrams: VI. — 00:48
• 15 Epigrams: VII. — 01:00
• 16 Epigrams: VIII. — 00:44
• 17 Epigrams: IX. — 00:58
• 18 Epigrams: X. — 01:27
• 19 Epigrams: XI. — 01:17
• 20 Epigrams: XII. — 01:30
• Total Runtime 01:14:30

Info for Carter: Late Works

An impressive cast of artists are joining together in this Ondine recording dedicated to the late works by iconic American composer Elliott Carter (1908–2012). The album includes five premiere recordings, including Carter’s final work Epigrams (2012) for piano trio, featuring Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Isabelle Faust and Jean-Guihen Queyras. The album also features percussionist Colin Currie joined together with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Oliver Knussen.

The earliest work included in this album, Dialogues, dates from 2003. It is a work for piano and orchestra composed of short, clearly articulated phrases. Carter wrote a sequel to the work, Dialogues II (2010), for Daniel Barenboim’s 70th birthday. Soundings (2005) was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for its Music Director at the time, Daniel Barenboim. The piece’s ten sections alternate between solo instruments (or small groups) and ensemble tutti, somewhat like a concerto grosso. Interventions (2007) – written for Boston Symphony Orchestra, James Levine and Daniel Barenboim – is a combination of piano concerto and orchestral tone poem. In 2010 Carter wrote Conversations, a mini-concerto for piano and percussion requested by Colin Currie. The following year, at the suggestion of Oliver Knussen, Carter added two brief prefatory movements and retitled the piece Two Controversies and a Conversation. Instances (2012), for chamber orchestra, is dedicated to Ludovic Morlot, Music Director of the Seattle Symphony. Carter describes the piece as “a series of short interrelated episodes of varying character.” Epigrams (2012) is Carter’s last composition. “To amuse myself” (as he put it), he began writing very short pieces that could be completed quickly and later assembled into a suite. Carter, who studied Greek poetry as an undergraduate at Harvard, was clearly drawn to the concision, surprising turns, and wit of the literary genre to which his twelve short Epigrams allude.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano
Isabelle Faust, violin
Jean-Guihen Queyras, cello
Colin Currie, percussion
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Oliver Knussen, conductor

No biography found.

Booklet for Carter: Late Works