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Description: Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard joins the orchestra under Pierre Boulez as they celebrate the American composer's birthday with his Clarinet Concerto, Dialogues, Catenaires For Solo Piano, and other works. Boulez's Derive II also features.
Birthday numbers: BBC Symphony Orchestra
The secret of longevity is composition, or so one might think to look at Elliott Carter. America’s leading composer celebrated his 100th birthday a few days ago. Not only is he still in fine fettle but he is also composing at a prodigious rate.
Last night’s birthday celebration by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Oliver Knussen brought together six scores all composed in the 21st century. No fewer than three concertos were among them; for cello (London premiere), horn (London premiere) and the Boston Concerto, while Sound Fields and Mad Regales were heard for the first time in the UK and the short Wind Rose, a BBC commission, was a world premiere.
As Carter himself observed, in the course of comments relayed by video from New York, where he is being honoured by his compatriots, he is getting impatient in his latter years. He therefore spends less time agonising over his scores, the better to ensure that they get finished.
You would hardly know that, however, from Sound Fields for string orchestra: a study in changing textures, their subtle, microscopic transformations demanding the attention in place of more distinctive gestures.
Wind Rose is a woodwind counterpart to Sound Fields, the textures now more pungent, made up as they are of heterogeneous elements (winds sound less alike than strings, as Carter pointed out), and underpinned by the peppery rasp of a contrabass clarinet.
Much of the cello concerto is more typical Carter: dynamic, abrasive, uncompromisingly acidulous on the ear. But in the second of the two slow movements there is a rapt moment of stillness when the cello soloist (here the able Anssi Karttunen) rhapsodises high above the gruff contrabass clarinettist (earning his fee on this occasion), with temple blocks supplying oriental punctuation.
After the whimsical, elusive Mad Regales for six voices came the Horn Concerto, another work of virile energy, capturing the traditional characteristics of the solo instrument but in a sound environment dominated by hard-edged woodwind and sinewy strings.
Finally the Boston Concerto, which allowed Knussen and the players (alert and responsive throughout) not only to demonstrate their virtuosity but also to draw out the expressivity that here also characterises the genial centenarian.
To be broadcast on Radio 3 on Friday at 7pm.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
