Elliott CARTER: Sunday, 9/7/17, 11:30pm

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

An hour-long, late-night programme devoted to a selection of works from Carter's long career

Musicians Wrestle Everywhere (1945); SWR Vocal Ensemble Stuttgart/Marcus Creed

Soundings (2005); Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)/BBC Symphony Orchestra/Oliver Knussen

Tell Me Where Is Fancy Bred (1937); Rosalind Rees (soprano),David Starobin (guitar)

Instances (2012); BBC Symphony Orchestra/Oliver Knussen

Three Poems of Robert Frost (1975); Patrick Mason (baritone)/Ensemble Speculum Musicae/David Starobin (conductor)

Interventions (2007); Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)/BBC Symphony Orchestra/Oliver Knussen (conductor)

To Music (1937); Eva-Maria Schape (soprano)/SWR Vocal Ensemble Stuttgart/Marcus Creed

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08xh20b

Can it really be nearly five years since Carter died?!

[Serial_Apologist]

Not very often do we get a chance to hear music from early on in Carter's career - excellent!

[ahinton]

Not very often do we get a chance to hear music from early on in Carter's career - excellent!

Indeed. Like Tippett, he took a long time finding himself; I think that first works in which he began to do so are the piano sonata, cello sonata and first string quartet but he'd already been composing for more than two decades when he wrote the earliest of those. I think that much of the juvenilia from the 1920s and early 1930s has been either suppressed or lost/disposed of, which is a shame because I'd very much like to set eyes in particular on an apparently rather ambitious piano sonata that he completed early in 1924 and showed to Charles Ives but which as far as I know has never been performed and probably no longer exists; Carter was very much into Scriabin in those days and who knows whether this might have iompacted on that work that predates by more than 20 years the fine piano sonata that we know from him. Ornstein lived longer that Carter by a few years but composed nothing in his final decade, his creative career spans almost 80 years whereas Carter's spans almost 90.

[jayne lee wilson]

Very welcome programming! Given my current chamber-musical obsessions I'll have to program in Carter's string quartets too, (if I ever get past Martinu and Enescu..)

[Richard Barrett]

Not very often do we get a chance to hear music from early on in Carter's career - excellent!

True but all the early pieces are vocal, and I've never been convinced by any of Carter's music for voice(s). I'm more interested in hearing the late pieces. I'm sure I haven't heard all three, although many of them have strong mutual similarities (and similar titles!).