Carter's What Next? on new ECM recording
(November 2003)
To mark the 95th birthday on 11 December of Elliott Carter, the elder statesman of American composition, ECM has released a new CD with premiere recordings of his opera What Next? plus the Asko Concerto (ECM 1817).
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The one-act opera What Next? was written in 1998 to a libretto by the British novelist and writer on music, Paul Griffiths, and deals with the immediate aftermath of a car crash in which there are six survivors, five adults and a child. It was premiered at the Berlin Staatsoper in 1999 conducted by Daniel Barenboim and subsequently performed in concert in Chicago, Amsterdam, Paris, London and Bruges.
The ECM recording was made live at the Amsterdam performances in the Concertgebouw in 2000, featuring an outstanding cast including Valdine Anderson, Sarah Leonard, Hilary Summers, William Joyner, Dean Elzinga and Emanuel Hoogeveen, with the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra conducted by Peter Eötvös. The coupling of the Asko Concerto, composed in 2000 for the Dutch Asko Ensemble, was recorded in the studio by the orchestra again under Eötvös.
"Carter's score has 45 minutes of his freshest, most inventive, most beautiful music. This composer's phenomenal capacity to delight and surprise never stops".
Boston Phoenix
"Now in his tenth decade, Carter has come up with the biggest surprise of all."
Opera News
"The results of Carter's first foray into opera are overwhelming... The audience in Berlin, ranging from old men in tuxedos and monocles to young couples in jeans and bright spandex, gave What Next? a standing ovation".
Washington Post
Carter's next premiere takes place on 23 January, when pianist Nicolas Hodges and the London Sinfonietta give the first performance of Dialogues at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.
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