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COLLECTION BBVA FOUNDATION ‐ NEOS
Happy Birthday, Elliott Carter!
Elliott Carter (*1908) New Chamber Works
SWISS CHAMBER SOLOISTS EDITION VOL. 2
CD CONTENT: 01 Mosaic In his youth, Carter often had the opportunity to come into contact with the composer and harp player Carlos Salzedo. Not only did Salzedo play a central role in the evolution of harp technique, he was also a leading figure in America’s musical avant‐garde during the 1920s and 1930s, when he was closely associated with Charles Ives and Edgard Varèse. Carter was highly impressed by the newly expanded timbral spectrum that this virtuoso was able to coax from the harp, an instrument previously defined largely by the familiar stereotypes of romantic music. With Mosaic, Carter seized the opportunity to express his deep veneration for this stellar instrumentalist and staunch advocate of contemporary music. Far from being solemn or overblown, the piece is light‐footed and elegant, vivacious and abounding with energy. Here Carter takes delight in probing the full range of timbres unveiled by this master of the harp. With impish enjoyment he lends the harp a double life devoted in equal measure to poetry and to flirtations with other instruments. Here the harp draws on the spirit of Impressionism with languorous glissandos or wanders off in reveries, seemingly losing track of time and indulgently dallying with a couple of repeated notes. But it can also display all sorts of wit and escapades, producing percussive sounds alongside crackling or whistling effects in imitation of a tin drum or a thunderclap. To be sure, the harp is the leading figure in this concertante fantasy, this rich mosaic of isolated particles, as is especially apparent in three cadenza‐like passages. Nonetheless, the woodwind trio and the string quartet are more than just an accompaniment: they appear as personalities capable of moving to the foreground at any time with complete independence. Moreover, besides pursuing their own identities, the seven instruments are especially concerned with their many and sundry dialectical relations to the harp. Indeed, the harp seems to draw inspiration from the sounds and behavior of its confrères, who are in turn cast in a new light through their interaction with the harp. 02 Figment IV In String Quartet No. 2 (1959), Carter treated the viola as a personality with a striking vein of lyricism in a playfully free creative space. He thereby assigned it the function of serving as the sensitive and sentimental member of the ensemble. Now, almost four decades later, the viola reappears with a similar tendency toward far‐flung melodic lines and a vocal ethos. But as so often in Carter’s music, a musical idea is always mutable and unsteady, capricious almost by nature, and never content to evolve along standard lines. Here the viola gives way to abrupt mood swings in which a fugitive lightness stands at the center of the musical events. The most surprising thing occurs, however, at the end of Figment IV, this “product of the imagination,” as rapid changes of string and heavily accented chords almost conjure up a sense of aggression. With rakish wit, Carter sweeps away the conventional image of the viola as well‐behaved and melancholy, just as Luciano Berio had done earlier in Sequenza VI. 03 Enchanted Preludes The title of this piece for flute and cello is taken from a poem in Wallace Stevens’s The Pure Good of Theory,
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namely, stanza 7 of “All the Preludes to Felicity”: Felicity, ah! Time is the hooded enemy, The inimical music, the enchanted space In which the enchanted preludes have their place. Carter has compared Enchanted Preludes to a Mendelssohn scherzo. Owing to the distinctive elegance of Mendelssohn’s style, he feels a special rapport with this composer. The present duo reveals his compositional sophistication, especially in his search for extremely delicate, precisely imagined sounds and his exploration of each and every relation between the two instruments. Even if the two protagonists at times betray a lust for independence, their constant desire for rapprochement comes again and again to the fore. Frequently one player seems to be listening with utmost attention to the other, trying to place the timbral effects and performance techniques of his interlocutor into a logical relation with himself. Thus, the harmonics and flautando effects of the cello often overlap with the melodic lines of the flute, and the many pizzicati and grace‐note flurries echo the flute’s staccato playing. The two musicians parcel out the demarcated musical space by developing highly expressive and contrapuntal melodic lines, or they meet and unite in long sustained notes. Enchanted Preludes thus seems designed to evoke the bliss of a cheerful love duet between two characters or instruments. 04‐11 Tempo e Tempi This song cycle, written for soprano and four instruments (oboe/English horn, clarinet/bass clarinet, violin, and cello), offers proof of Carter’s great affinity with Italian culture and poetry. The work consists of eight melodies on poems by Eugenio Montale, Salvatore Quasimodo, and Giuseppe Ungaretti. The first song, written for voice, violin, English horn, and bass clarinet and entitled Tempo e Tempi (like the cycle itself), is an excellent reflection of Carter’s notion of musical time. Indeed, Montale addresses several levels of time in which the various layers evolve in different directions and rarely intersect. The music reflects the structure of the underlying poem through a retrograde canon for voice and violin and a second canon in augmentation and inversion for bass clarinet and English horn. In the second song, Ed è subito sera (Quasimodo), the voice evolves freely while the accompaniment works out a double canon in inversion for English horn plus clarinet and violin plus cello. Oboe sommerso (Quasimodo), dedicated to Heinz Holliger, has the voice accompanied entirely by the oboe. In the first section the instrument primarily plays detached, isolated pitches, as if to reinforce the syllabic declamation of the poem. In the second, the voice appears more expansive and communicative, but without making the oboe abandon its declamatory style. In Una Colomba (Ungaretti) the poetic aphorism, consisting of a single sentence, is festooned with ravishingly delicate cooing from the clarinet. The fifth piece, Godimento (Ungaretti), is dedicated to the composer Roman Vlad and his wife. The accompaniment is based on a polyrhythmic pattern in which each of the four instruments must cope with its own groups of staccatissimo notes. Above this the voice spreads out with arching melodic phrases that soar freely over the agitated instruments. L’Arno a Rovezzano (Montale) is the most intense and dramatic piece in the entire cycle. The instrumental accompaniment sounds massive and turbulent, almost out of place, and often virtuosic with interpolated snatches of lyricism. It thus symbolizes the poem, in which the journey through time is represented in the form of rivers and their implacable flow, projecting an emotional confusion that sometimes gives rise to nostalgia and tacit unease. The next piece, Uno (Ungaretti), is accompanied by the cello. Between the two sections of song the cello plays an elaborate transition in the style of a veritable cadenza – doubtless an obeisance to the song’s dedicatee, the cellist Fred Sherry, a tireless defender of Carter’s music. The cycle concludes with Segreto del poeta (Ungaretti), a poem dealing with night, but ending with the word “light.” The music emerges in long, slowly changing chords that vacillate subtly between bright and dark, creating a fascinating epilogue that imparts a feeling of serene poise and deep‐felt intimacy. 12 HBHH Besides his principal instrument, the piano, Carter also studied the oboe during his years at Harvard. Time and again he has attached special importance to the oboe in his music, much as Mozart did for the clarinet. In this respect Heinz Holliger, a loyal friend and fellow‐musician as well as an unstinting champion of Carter’s music, has played a quite special role as dedicatee, source of inspiration, and creator. HBHH for unaccompanied oboe is Carter’s most recent “present” to the famous oboist. The four mysterious letters of the title are nothing more than an abbreviation for “Happy Birthday to Heinz Holliger,” rendered musically in the first bar by the
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consecutive pitches B and B‐flat (“H” and “B” in German letter notation) and in the last by the note B, twice repeated (“HH” in German letter notation). The first section of this brief piece finds the oboe in a dreamy and exalted mood primarily occupied with expansive, highly emotional vocal lines. In contrast, the second section presents the instrument in a more “undulating and multiform” frame of mind – or, to quote Montaigne, “ondoyant et divers,” an expression Carter himself is fond of using. The musical discourse winds its way with rapid melodic spirals through a musical fabric that is eventually torn apart by a succession of terse passages and isolated notes before devolving into a series of trills and resonating quivers. 13‐14 Fragment I and Fragment II Carter’s five string quartets unquestionably form a central point of emphasis in his œuvre, with each quartet containing a basic key to an understating of his musical thought. But the string quartet format was no less important to him when he came to compose the Fragments, two intricately developed pieces that attain a high timbral polish using, as the title suggests, a concise, almost rudimentary form. Fragment I apparently draws heavily on the “Adagio Sereno” of String Quartet No. 5, where the four instruments likewise play mainly in their overtone series (harmonics). Here, however, another element is added to the timbre, for the point of contact between the bow and the string is deliberately and subtly altered. Plucked notes (pizzicato harmonics) sporadically interrupt the flow of sound, distorting and troubling the pure, translucent timbres. Fragment II toys with two fundamentally different yet intersecting musical ideas. At any given moment two instruments (initially first violin and cello, then second violin and viola) unfold as a duo with long sustained notes of exquisite delicacy in the background. While they do this, the other two instruments regale the listener almost inappropriately with music ranging from lyrical intensity to wild abandon and boisterous virtuosity. This counterpoint of opposites, superposing a temporal layer of endless meditation upon a second layer of brief, scatter‐shot outbursts, seems to recall the “Adagio” from Carter’s String Quartet No. 1. 15 Quartet for Oboe and String Trio When we speak of the oboe quartet as a genre, Mozart’s Oboe Quartet (K. 370) immediately springs to the mind of every musical connoisseur. With his quartet for the same formation, however, Carter shows us that he felt no special need to come to terms with this celebrated masterpiece. Nonetheless, there are several obvious parallels between the two works: the all‐encompassing concern for ingenious workmanship, the continuous renewal and expansion of the musical expression, and the conscious elaboration of concertante elements among the instruments. The Quartet for Oboe and String Trio, premièred by Heinz Holliger, presents the wind instrument as a stage figure with an almost isolated timbre and a whimsically virtuosic and fantastical character. Carter himself stated that he wanted to write an oboe part for Holliger that had to be extremely virtuous and brilliant, demanding from the performer extreme changes of register and ultra‐fast runs at top velocity. Holliger, he continued, has a consummate command of his instrument, which, as we all know, has practically no limitations under his fingers. The composer decided to put the great oboist’s prowess once again to the test. The work has eight elided movements and an inner scaffolding consisting of six relatively short duos representing all permutations of the four instruments: 1. Moderato, 2. Maestoso (violin plus viola), 3. Moderato leggiero (oboe plus viola), 4. Andante appassionata (oboe plus cello), 5. Tranquillo, 6. Allegro agitato (viola plus cello), 7. Andante (violin plus cello), and 8. Allegro fantastico (oboe plus violin). The musical discourse results from the interaction of the instruments as they constantly recur in contrasting duo combinations. It is counterbalanced by their claim for short, unrestrained outbursts (especially from the oboe) and by intricately wrought solo passages that come especially to the fore at the opening and the conclusion of the quartet.
Max Noubel Translation from the German: J. Bradford Robinson