Reviews of Carter's new song cycle What Are Years

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Reviews of Carter's new song cycle What Are Years

(October 2010)

Elliott Carter's new song cycle, What Are Years, received first performances in Aldeburgh, Tanglewood and Lucerne this summer.

At its premiere at the Aldeburgh Festival in June, Elliott Carter’s new song cycle What Are Years “came across as a marvel of terseness and quick thinking…” The Sunday Times went on to describe how “these five settings are as spare and splintery as anything he has produced: an old man’s music, for sure, but with no loss of fierce intensity… He is on wonderfully friendly terms with years.”

“In these exquisite settings of poems by Marianne Moore, the vocal line, expressively delivered by soprano Claire Booth, seemed to float and plunge on waves of delicate, splashy marimba and crisp, percussive detail.”
Observer

What Are Years is already in the repertoire of three long-time champions of Carter’s music. Pierre Boulez conducted the work’s premiere with the Ensemble Intercontemporain in Aldeburgh and a further performance at the Lucerne Festival in September. The US premiere took place at the Tanglewood Festival in August conducted by Oliver Knussen, and Daniel Barenboim directs the German premiere with the Staatskapelle Berlin next July.

“… they go straight to perennial dilemmas of human existence …”
Sunday Telegraph

“Each of the five poems displayed a different facet of Moore’s and Carter’s blended voices. All engage paradoxes central to human existence, a theme for which Carter’s mastery of multi-level structural interactions offers the perfect musical counterpart… Although Carter continues to avoid wearing his heart on his sleeve, and stubbornly insists that the mind be engaged along with the heart, the “mighty singing” of this unique centenarian musician grows ever more powerful and deeply moving with the years of his writing and of our listening. In this way he answers the question posed by the work’s title.”
The Berkshire Review

Elliott Carter’s next premiere is a Concertino for Bass Clarinet and Chamber Orchestra with Virgil Blackwell as soloist, the highlight of an all-Carter concert in Toronto on 10 December, followed by a New York performance at the Miller Theatre next June. The composer is currently completing a concise double concerto for the combined talents of pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard and percussionist Colin Currie, due for premiere next year.

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