Carter Vi

Elliott Carter was something of a 'late starter' as a composer, but he has made up for that with an almost unprecedented fecundity of creative activ ity and accomplishment in advanced old age. The programme on this disc contrasts a comparatively 'early' orchestral work, from his mid-thirties, with the highly mature Violin Concerto written in his eighty-second year and a solo violin cycle most of which was composed in his nineties. At the time of writing this note (July 2005) Carter is not far short of his own centenary, and continuing to produce highly complex, sophisticated scores with an energy that would hardly be conceivable even in a much younger man.

from the attached booklet

The combination of contemporary music and contemporary poetry ought to create an exciting fusion for a contemporary audience. But we live in an age where neither is valued highly enough individually, and the combination seems even more daunting. But Carters vocal pieces are among his most profoundly complex, subtle, unpredictable emotional adventures. As more performers figure out how to make them work — how to make them "speak," seem "lived through" (which is what has happened with Carter's instrumental music, especially his string quartets) — they too may finally get the audiences they deserve.

from the attached booklet

Critics often write as if technique and expression - or indeed form and content - are entirely separate. As if the manipulations of tone and rhythm, line and harmony, which the composer must perform in order to create his music are somehow divorced from, if not actually inimical to, the music's emotional life. Yet in the greatest composers there is of course no such opposition: technique exists to project and embody the poetry, the imaginative fire, that audiences respond to whether or not they know or care about the music's inner workings. Technique is expression.
Thus it is with Elliott Carter.

from the attached booklet