Naxos 8.559151
[62:43] budget price

Current Reviews

by Jon Yungkans

Sergei Prokofiev
Piano Concerto No. 1-3

Martha Argerich, piano
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor



Samuel Barber
Orchestral Works and Concertos
Leonard Slatkin, Charles Munch



Rimsky-Korsakov
Evgeny Svetlanov


Beethoven
Symphony No.9
Piano Transcription by Franz Liszt
Konstantin Scherbakov, Piano



Kronos Caravan

… I should have known better than to try writing works like my First Symphony and Holiday Overture in a deliberately restricted idiom – that is, in an effort to produce works that meant something to me as music and yet might, I hoped, be understandable to the general musical public.                                    

– Elliott Carter, Flawed Words and Stubborn Sounds

After the intense hunger for wanting to learn about all things new about music and literature, spending time with composer Charles Ives at length, being exposed to the music of Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Bartok and studying with famed teacher Nadia Boulanger in Paris, Elliot Carter faced the same dilemma experienced by American composers in general at the time.  Like Aaron Copland, William Schuman and Roy Harris, Carter bowed to the populist trend of the 1930’s and 40’s, not only so that his works would be performed at all but also so that “many people could presumably grasp and easily enjoy [the music] at a time of social emergency.”  

Carter’s decision was more an act of social consciousness than aesthetic taste, and one with which, deep down, he was definitely not comfortable – artistically or personally. 

Carter’s mind was willing but his heart wasn’t committed.  This explains the lack of spirit and undue optimism that permeates both the early scores on this disc.  Written in 1944 to celebrate the Allies’ liberation of France from the Nazis, the Holiday Overture, comes across as hyperactive Copland – brash, exuberant but, ultimately, empty orchestral fireworks.  The middle section of this work is more jagged and complex – the true Carter trying to break through an artistic straightjacket – and probably one reason it languished unperformed in the music library of the Boston Symphony (the orchestra that commissioned the work).  Ironically, given the circumstances under which it was composed, the overture was finally premièred in Germany. 

Written two years earlier than the overture, the First Symphony is more problematic.  Lower-keyed in overall intensity and also Coplandesque but with a greater degree of refinement, it ambles easily and pleasantly, building gradually and inevitably in tension but never grippingly or memorably.  No wonder, given the composer’s inner dilemma about his works at the time.  Heart and genuine commitment are definitely missing.  And like the Holiday Overture, the symphony promptly disappeared from sight. 
The one piece of Carter’s that did make an immense impact during this period was one that he wrote strictly for his own enjoyment – his Cello Sonata, written in 1948.  That work pointed the way for the composer’s mature style.  As Davis Schiff wrote at the beginning of his book, The Music of Elliott Carter, 

Elliott Carter makes music out of simultaneous opposition.  A piano accelerates to a flickering tremolo as a harpsichord slows to silence.  Second violin and viola, half of a quartet, sound cold, mechanical pulses, while first violin and cello, the remaining duo, play with intense expressive passion.  Two, three, four orchestras superimpose clashing, unrelated sounds.  A bass lyrically declaims ancient Greek against a mezzo-soprano’s American patter.  These surface oppositions point to profound structural and aesthetic polarities.  The music is often Apollonian and Dionysian at the same time.  This is not because different aspects of the music belong to one category or another, as when we say that Brahms’s melodies are Romantic and his structures Classical, but because every aspect of the composition articulates opposed values.  The music is at once highly structured and improvisatory; fragmented yet unbroken.

In short, head and heart were finally united, working together both as a team and in opposition.  Once Carter set off on his true direction – first through a series of chamber works, then in his Variations for Orchestra – his compositions became dynamic and engaging – complex, intellectual but extremely inviting.  He started thinking of his works as “a society of sounds” in which single instruments and instrumental groups, in an almost verbal manner, converse, debate and discuss.  In that sense it is not far removed from Samuel Barber, but, while Barber’s compositions are rooted in song, Carter’s, generally, follow the dynamics of speech in a more rarefied, dissonant but never dispassionate style.  If anything, Carter’s music is often extremely red-blooded – one vital reason for its appeal. While Carter’s works sometimes are frenzied and hard to follow, they can also be extremely rewarding once a listener becomes acclimatized to their language.

An integral part of Carter’s musical language and structure is the layering within his works: level after level of musical discourse interacting on its own and reacting with one another.  In his book The Concerto, Michael Steinberg mentions how he played a record of the aria “Mein tuerer Heiland” from Bach’s Saint John Passion at a party where Carter was present.  On hearing the aria, the composer, who had been engaged in conversation, suddenly looked up and said, “Why, that’s just like my music!”  Carter meant that the intricate textural layers of voice, cello obbligato, bass line and chorale paralleled his own compositional efforts.

Interaction is the key to understanding Carter’s Piano Concerto, more a concertante work than one strictly for soloist and orchestra.  Passion, concentration and overall chemistry in maintaining the continually changing and evolving conversations between pianist and orchestra are the make-or-break elements in this work, especially at times when there are up to 72 simultaneous parts on eight distinct rhythmic layers – a virtual metropolis of musical communication.  Without them, the music descends from a towering megadrama to a meandering Tower of Babel.

Kenneth Schermerhorn and the Nashville Symphony prove their excellent Ives Second Symphony and Robert Browning Overture disc was no fluke, acquitting themselves extremely well in all the works here.  Their chemistry with pianist Mark Wait is vibrant and persuasive, and the Piano Concerto ends long before you expect it or want it to.

Here’s another winner in the Naxos series of American Classics.

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