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Articles » Carter Concerto for Orchestra
Elliot Carter - Concerto for Orchestra
Carter: Concerto for Orchestra
One of only three works Carter completed in the 1960s, the Concerto for Orchestra represents Carter’s music at its most titanic and impetuous, unleashing elemental forces to devastating effect. After he’d started composing the piece, Carter came across St John Perse’s poem Vents, with its evocation of mighty winds destroying and then renewing America. This provided a metaphorical focus for the musical drama of a world in which nothing is stable, everything is in a process of constant transformation until the material of the entire concerto is swept up into the last movement before finally disintegrating into the silence from which it emerged.
CD Recommendations
3x London Sinfonietta; Knussen (Virgin VC 7 91503-2; with Three Occasions for Orchestra, Violin Concerto).
There are few conductors whose authority in Carter’s music matches that of Oliver Knussen, and with an ensemble as proficient and committed as the London Sinfonietta, the work gains a transparency that makes its progress inexorable, yet still mysterious. The Violin Concerto, here performed by Ole Bohn, who gave its premiere, is one of the most strikingly lyrical of Carter’s recent works.
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Sheet Music by Carter
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