Carter: What are Years premieres at summer festivals

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Carter: What are Years premieres at summer festivals

(April 2010)

Three of the world’s leading conductors, Pierre Boulez, James Levine and Daniel Barenboim, give premieres of Elliott Carter’s most recent song cycle, What Are Years, over the coming festival seasons.

What Are Years, scored for soprano and ensemble, sets five texts by American poet Marianne Moore (1887-1972). The Aldeburgh Festival plays host to the world premiere at Snape Maltings on 26 June with soprano Claire Booth and the Ensemble Intercontemporain conducted by Pierre Boulez. The 12-minute work is dedicated to Pierre Laurent Aimard, Artistic Director of the Aldeburgh Festival, who planned a special focus on the composer’s music at last year’s festival, and as pianist has long been a champion of Carter’s works

Following the Aldeburgh premiere, the first US and Swiss performances are presented this summer by co-commissioners the Tanglewood Music Center of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Lucerne Festival. James Levine conducts the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra on 16 August and Pierre Boulez the Lucerne Festival Orchestra on 1 September. The German premiere has been scheduled by Daniel Barenboim conducting the Staatskapelle Berlin in July 2011.

Elliott Carter has in recent years been exploring American modernist poetry dating from the first half of the 20th century, including song settings of Wallace Stevens in In the Distances of Sleep, Ezra Pound in On Conversing with Paradise, and Louis Zukofsky in a recent cycle for soprano and clarinet. Marianne Moore rose to prominence in 1920s literary circles when she came to the attention of poets such as Stevens, Pound, William Carlos Williams and TS Eliot. In turn, as a literary editor, she promoted younger poets including Elizabeth Bishop, Allen Ginsberg and John Ashbery. Carter describes how “Marianne Moore’s brilliant poetry with its sharp but personal fascination with life, has held my attention for many years, so I decided to write this song cycle which shows a few of her many sides”.

The five settings that make up What Are Years are arranged to reveal poetic character through varied instrumentation. Like a Bulwark opens dramatically with the full ensemble, demonstrating a strength against fate symbolised by the Old Glory flag. That Harp You Play So Well refers to the psalmist David and thins the texture down to harp and cello to accompany the soprano. The Being So-Called Human sets the conclusion of Moore’s The Pangolin, where man seeks renewal like the new sun, with percussion and woodwind. Percussion is also prominent in To an Intra-Mural Rat, a rapid scherzo with scurrying solo lines. The extended final setting What Are Years restores the full ensemble and returns to the theme of strength against destiny, depicted as a caged bird singing with joy.

Carter’s Ezra Pound setting On Conversing with Paradise, for baritone and ensemble, continues to travel with forthcoming performances in Los Angeles (24 April) and New York (7 June) and the French premiere in Paris with the Ensemble Intercontemporain (11 February 2011).

> Aldeburgh Festival
> Tanglewood Festival
> Lucerne Festival

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