Piano Anna Rose Carter

These quartets are Juilliard specialties, and anyone wanting to hear this music played with a near ideal combination of virtuosity and humanity need look no further. Carter's quartets are not for the musically faint of heart: they are uncompromisingly thorny, intricate pieces that require lots of intense, dedicated listening. Very few people doubt their seriousness–or even their claims to musical greatness–but just as few people enjoy listening to them. Perhaps this spectacular set will encourage the adventurous to give them a shot. They're worth the time.

Born in Sussex in 1877, Roger Quilter was a fellow-student of Percy Grainger, Cyril Scott, and H. Balfour Gardiner at the Hoch Conservatory, in Frankfurt, where he studied for almost five years under the guidance of the German professor of composition Iwan Knorr. He is best known for his contribution to English art song, having composed around 150 songs, many of which remain regular recital favourites. For this album, the tenor James Gilchrist and pianist Anna Tilbrook explore his output from early works such as ‘Now sleeps the crimson petal’ through to late examples such as ‘The Ash Grove’. All of the songs are settings of English texts, with the exception of the Four Songs of Mirza Schaffy, which set German texts by Friedrich von Bodenstedt. The musicians have arranged their selection of twenty-seven songs into thematic groups – Shakespeare songs, songs about flowers, folksongs, songs of love etc. – which makes for a fascinating and rewarding programme.

Altoist/arranger Benny Carter's classic Further Definitions is a revisiting, instrumentation-wise, to the famous 1937 session that Carter and tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins made in France with two top European saxophonists (Andre Ekyan and Alix Combelle) and guitarist Django Reinhardt. The all-star group (which also includes Hawkins, altoist Phil Woods, Charlie Rouse on second tenor, pianist Dick Katz, guitarist John Collins, bassist Jimmy Garrison, and drummer Jo Jones) performs a particularly inspired repertoire. Carter's charts, which allow Hawkins to stretch out on "Body and Soul," give everyone a chance to shine. "Honeysuckle Rose" and "Crazy Rhythm" hold their own with the 1937 versions, and "Blue Star" and "Doozy" prove to be two of Carter's finest originals. Although Benny Carter was not actively playing much at the time (this was his only small-group recording during 1963-1975), he is heard in typically prime form. Very highly recommended.

The late works of Elliott Carter (1908 2012) are so numerous as to constitute an output on their own. Just where the composer’s ‘late period’ begins is itself a matter of conjecture, yet no one hearing the pieces on this disc is likely to doubt their technical finesse or expressive refinement: qualities that go a long way towards the defining of ‘lateness’ in artistic terms.

During the period of lockdown in 2020, tenor Alessandro Fisher and his wife spent many hours in their garden. A heightened awareness of the beauty of nature, the flowers in their garden and the changes to the garden as winter moved to spring, and then to summer formed the basis of this beautifully curated recital.

Compositions from both East and West here bring together the powerful voices of six women composers from contrasting cultures. Their music ranges from the Romantic period via Impressionism and Neoclassicism to the present. Vivid impressions alternate with absolute music, strict sonata forms with free forms full of delicate musical poetry.

In this imaginatively shaped and sensitively played album – her third for ECM - Russian pianist Anna Gourari explores musical connections and influences extending across the arts. Three suites of contemporary music are heard here. Alfred Schnittke’s Five Aphorisms (1990) draw impulses from the poetry of his friend Joseph Brodsky. Rodion Shchedrin’s Diary - Seven Pieces (2002) dedicated to Gourari and inspired by her playing, reflects the life of a pianist and composer. Wolfgang Rihm’s sequence of tombeaux, Zwiesprache (1999) pays tribute to musicologists Alfred Schlee and Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht, conductor Paul Sacher, and art sociologist Hermann Wiesler. Threaded between the cycles are two Giya Kancheli miniatures drawn from theatre and movie music, as well as Arvo Pärt’s early tintinnabuli-style Variations for the Healing of Arinuschka (1977). Gourari’s investigation of artistic affinities is framed with Bach’s transcriptions of Venetian composers Antonio Vivaldi and Alessandro Marcello: “Anna Gourari makes these Bach slow movements, too, ours,” Paul Griffiths writes in the liner notes. “And the newer music is cherished and invigorated.”

Opening with a fleshy, resonant version of "90+," which was nominated for a 1998 Grammy award, this Carter collection is special not only for Charles Rosen's execution but also for the CD-closing conversation between performer and composer. Rosen opens the chat with a demonstration of how harmonic dissonance at once backlights and highlights Carter's famed rhythmic explorations. And Carter tells him, "This is the way we experience many things, the idea that one thing comments on another constantly." That's how Carter's music is, also constantly: frontal harmonic shocks, whether ringing tremulously or jumping in bursts of flash–as in Rosen's read of the Piano Sonata–are in dialogue with silence, rhythmic twists, and plainly beautiful constructions that sound in-process.
On 2008 came out: Oppens Plays Carter, Cedille CDR 90000 108, with piano pieces composed after 1997 (Two Diversions; Retrouvailles; Two Thoughts About the Piano; Matribute): Elliott Carter isn't the easiest composer to love, but he's an important one.

This CD of the complete music for solo piano by Elliott Carter, (b. 1908) offers the opportunity to get to know some of the most difficult and challenging works, musically and technically, for the instrument in American music. Although he has not written extensively for solo piano, Carter's two large works for the instrument, the Sonata (1946) and the "Night Fantasies" (1980) are extraordinary compositions. The pianist Ursula Oppens is a long-time champion of Carter and other contemporary composers.