infotext:
Elliott Carter - Cello Concerto The English conductor Oliver Knussen sees Elliott Carter as "the most important contemporary musical dramatist in the field of instrumental composition". For his scores, Elliott Carter creates veritable scenarios in which the instrumentalists act as individual characters. In his Cello Concerto from 2001, too, he treats the soloist as well as the individual orchestra musicians as independent protagonists. Elliott Carter's compositions are metrically complex and labyrinthine, they impress with their structural density and astonishing virtuosity, and influences from neoclassicism and Schönberg's twelve-tone technique are recognizable. Musical processes often happen simultaneously and lead to violent contrasts. Despite all its complexity, his music follows clear basic compositional principles: Simple pulse beats result in a compressed rhythmic network of relationships known as »metric modulation« through sophisticated layering, the melodic lines are based on interval schemes, harmonic progressions take place in sharply defined units. The soloist opens the cello concerto with a solo cadenza. It already contains motivic material that will return in the course of the movement. Although the 20-minute concert flows through in a continuous flow, seven sections are recognizable, which clearly differ from each other due to their characteristic movement. They are linked by shorter episodes that motivically refer to the Allegro fantastico anticipate the final. Dramatic, the first section, offers the greatest possible contrast in syntax right at the beginning. With whipping blows, all the orchestral instruments fall together in a rugged very strong into the cello's monologue, which initially begins brittle and jagged and then transitions into a more forgiving, more melodic one quiet. After this hard rhythmic accentuation as a group, the orchestra acts in the following Allegro appassionato-Part no longer as a bundled tutti force, but in a fanned out form. The giocoso The third movement consists of a delicate duet between cello and percussion. This is how a game unfolds over 50 bars with the most economical instrumentation and gestures in a distinctive sound. In the center is a Slow, in which the cello is silent for a few bars for the first time, only to begin a broad line in the low register. In this slow movement with its cello melos and long slurs, the tonally nuanced, chamber music-like accompaniment once again shows Elliott Carter's high art of orchestration. The following after a short transition masterful-Part brings a dialogue between the solo instrument and the brass, which create an effective counterweight with accented chords. The penultimate movement captivates with unusual beauty of sound, Tranquillo. The cello kicks meditating and very close and with rich harmonies appearing in the high register, countered by the deep playing of the bass clarinet. Once again, Melos is allowed to exude voluptuously. The final sentence returns to Great pace back, at the same time it seems to mean a summary of the work. In this finale, the orchestra rises to become the actual protagonist with a dramatic tutti increase, only to once again leave the cello to its own devices. The concert fades away as it began: with a soloist acting alone. Suzanne Schmerda
Udo Zimmerman One could almost speak of an »anti-concert«: in contrast to the usual solo concert, in which the soloist presents himself as an individual designer in order to be able to engage in a dramatic dialogue with the orchestra, the experienced opera composer Udo Zimmermann moves this scenic component internally. With him, soft tones predominate, and the beginning is not only the most »non-public« genre of music, but also a song that is whispered rather than sung. Five texts of different lengths and different characters are put in front like a motto and want to be associated with the music (Ingeborg Bachmann: Songs from an Island; Heinrich Heine: Lyrical interlude; Else Lasker-Student: reconciliation; Francis of Assisi: Indulceam ubi est culpa; Friedrich Holderlin: Hyperion's Doomsong). At first you can sing along, but later the sound-word relationship loosens up and invites you to look for other points of association, openings. It's getting harder and harder; after the Schumann quote, which can be understood word for word, it goes deeper and deeper into the music, one has to keep an eye out for expressive layers, sensitivities, atmospheric moments. The opening words of the poem by Else Lasker-Schüler appear at the beginning of the large, canonical central section after the soloist's first cadenza. We can only speculate where the words of Ingeborg Bachmann and Francis of Assisi belong - maybe not or not only to a certain place? The quote from St. Francis refers to the composition created in 1992 Pax Questuosa out. With farewell, mourning, night, homelessness, the texts revolve around related subject areas; the music creates a background against which the lyrics stand like commentaries. The structure of the cello concerto is characterized by deeply sunken vocality. The untextual "text-carrying" voices of the canon passage are the most accessible, rehearsable examples. The music as a whole is characterized by the same rhetorical style, which reveals itself to be word-generated – it almost seems as if the composer started from an almost systematic gradation of the word reference. In this respect, it would be too easy to speak of polyphonically unfolded songs without words - if only because, unlike Mendelssohn, certain texts are included. The statement that this music presents itself as accessible seems to aim at its materiality. For example, entire passages of the superimposed canons do without accidentals. Where else does this exist in sophisticated music of the past 200 years? It is no different with Zimmermann, who is familiar with all the compositional techniques of the last few decades, than with the tonal late Schönberg – what he dispenses with remains present as a negative foil, it helps to define and understand the narrow scope that he assures himself of. As if he doesn't want to get out of his self-spun cocoon, he remains in the darkened, archaically intoned A minor sonority, commits himself with the canons to a dogmatically pre-regulated self-running, formalized repetition compulsions, but also to a holding inward circles. Apart from the respective new entries into the canonical structure, the music seems to swim diffusely, to meander aimlessly. The ear is most likely to find that Cantus firmus Just; but its rhythm also changes. The soloist "speaks" against all of this with Else Lasker-Schüler's sonorous, silent words, but then also falls prey to the canon. Here the old necessitates the new and the new necessitates the old – one could not exist without the other. Perhaps in the difficult search for standards for newly composed music we should first simply ask whether, like this one, it is capable of inspiring us to become to force listening. Peter Gulke |
program:
Elliot Carter (* 1908)
[01] Cello Concerto (2001) 21:30
Udo Zimmerman [*one]
»Songs from an Island« [2009] 17:39
Concerto per cello with orchestra
[02] I cried in the dream 3:04
[03] Reflection (Come una Cadenza) 2:22
[04] Reconciliation (quatuor canones et cantus firmus) 6:59
[05] departure 2:46
[06] Remembrance 2:29
total time: 39:19
Jan Vogler, cello
Symphony Orchestra of Bayerischen Rundfunks
Kristjan Jarvi, conductor
Press:
Only for a few
The cellist Jan Vogler explores paths away from the mainstream with the cello concertos by Elliott Carter and Udo Zimmermann. But he uses his ability to span wide, cantabile bows profitably here as well. […] The complexity of the music is not at the expense of expression or cantabile; not without reason referred to Oliver
Knussen Carter as the most important musical dramatist of instrumental music. […] Together the musicians place themselves deeply at the service of the music and each open up their very own worlds of sound; in very different ways this music is very contemporary and yet not really 21st century music. Technical brilliance and an enlightening booklet support a rather modest overall playing time (less than 40 minutes), but all in all an extremely coherent and profitable production.
Juergen Schaarwaechter
11/2012
03/2011
RECOMMENDATION
Musical rating: 5
Technical score: 5
Repertoire value: 5
booklet: 5
Overall rating: 5
In 93, at the age of 2001, Elliott Carter wrote a twenty-minute cello concerto. The idea of musical groups whose existence is based not on being with each other but on opposing each other fell on just as fertile ground in the USA as the concept of music that remains an organism, but whose members move in different directions at different tempos.
In the cello concerto, too, the orchestra musicians and the soloist behave protagonistically. The latter begins with a solo cadenza. It already hints at the material that characterizes the through-composed concert movement. Irrespective of the continuous flow of the game, seven scenes of their own kind can be identified, connected by episodic anticipations of the final «Allegro fantastico».
The symphonic musicians of the Bavarian Radio under the encouraging direction of the young Kristjan Järvi fulfill the character designation of the head part, "Drammatico", with sharp contrasts. They join in the solo cello's monologue with whipping fortissimo beats.
The following «Allegro appassionato» part disregards such tutti violence. The heart of the concert is a delicate duet between the solo cello – which Jan Vogler (in Goethe's sense) breathes a beautiful soul into – and the drums. Here, as in the following «Lento», Carter shows himself to be a master of orchestral colors and scents.
The «Maestoso» section engages the soloist in a dialogue that the orchestra's brass happily engages in, before the cello once again pours out its beguiling melos. The concert drama ends lonely, as it began.
In 2009, Udo Zimmermann wrote an undramatic, discreet, inward-looking concerto for cello and orchestra. Its title, borrowed from Ingeborg Bachmann, suggests the poetic idea: Songs from an Island. "I cried in my dreams," the solo cello sings in distress at first, "I dreamed that you were lying in your grave." Lost the lyrical self, almost speechless with the pain of loss. Heine's melancholy, lifted into song by Schumann, punctuated by pauses.
"In the beginning you can sing along, later the tone-word relationship loosens up and asks you to look for other points of association, entrances," commented Peter Gülke in the Munich program booklet. The composer entered five texts into his score, which flowed into his music as a poetic undercurrent (from: Songs from an island by Ingeborg Bachmann, Lyric Intermezzo by Heinrich Heine; Else Lasker-Schüler: Reconciliation; Francis of Assisi: Indulceam ubi est culpa ; Friedrich Hölderlin: Hyperion's Destiny Song).
The opening lines of Lasker-Schüler's poem precede the canonical middle section (after the first solo cadence). The words of Bachmann and St. Francis hover as rather placeless voices over the piece, which lasts a good quarter of an hour. Vogler, Järvi and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra subtly immerse themselves in the inherent vocal quality of the circling work.
Lutz Lesle
13.12.2010
Best Recordings of the Year 2010 - New Release
A disc with just 39 minutes of playing time? Yes. And not only do I think that's not a problem, I like it. There is no reason that in 2010 any published sound recording should be measured by how close it gets to the (now) arbitrary 80-minute mark that the CD has standardized. That limit has just about become meaningless. SACDs can only fit about 70-some minutes on a disc. But SACDs with regular definition content can fit up to ten hours. If audio-only BluRay discs become common, the limit is even higher (will we complain then, if the music on one disc doesn't max out the storage capacity?), but more likely the very idea of “capacity” is going to go, as we are moving towards streaming, downloading, and media servers. The blurb on press flyer justifying the short playing time doesn't even go into that, but is just as right: “We deemed it appropriate not to dilute the impact of these two works by adding any filler, just to get to a greater play time for this SACD.” Bravo!
I've written about the concert from where this CD was recorded here. Elliot Carter's Cello Concerto with its searching and confused solo cello opening—courtesy Jan Vogler—is pierced by orchestra stabs that are as short as they are vigorous, which then mellow considerably as they travel through the orchestral sections one by one. The orchestra has one surprising moment approximating lyricism, the cello part is often barely played, timidly screeching like cats at night with broken hearts. Atypical for Carter, the meandering work makes it difficult to perceive any musical purpose or goal, though the end has a coy smile that gives Carter, even at his most modern, that human touch that many of his modernist colleagues lack. By the way: Happy Birthday Eliot!
Still more intriguing on this disc is Udo Zimmermann's Cello Concerto “Songs from an Island” which received its world premiere performance here, under Kristjan Järvi and with Vogler. Zimmermann is in charge of the Musica Viva series, so seeing a composition of his at his 'own' event—though the first in over a decade—wasn't terribly surprising. The work itself, its quality and listenability, is surprising though. It starts with lengthy, fragmented quotes from Schumann's "I cried in a dream" (Dichterliebe, op.48) which allow the cello to do what it can do best: sing. While the cello is almost incidental to Carter's concerto (any instrument—a dulcimer, for example—might have served equally well), here it is stipulated by Zimmermann's music. Purpose, truth's little cousin, is established and the mind can begin to grasp and the ears can go on a journey with the composer. Zimmermann hides behind Schumann for the beauty; typical of the reflexive cowardice of modern(ist) European composers when it comes to musical consonance. “Is that allowed? Is this an Anti-Concerto” his notes at the concert disingenuously questioned and eagerly postulated. But better beauty and purpose under a pretense than not at all, and that's what we get: the concerto is gorgeous, even when it gets busy, noisy, and tangled. Via perceptible ideas and motifs, through recognizability and musical craftsmanship Udo Zimmermann has arrived, if not at truth, so at least in reality.
Awards & Mentions:
13.12.2010
Best Recordings of the Year 2010 - New Release
A disc with just 39 minutes of playing time? Yes. And not only do I think that's not a problem, I like it. There is no reason that in 2010 any published sound recording should be measured by how close it gets to the (now) arbitrary 80-minute mark that the CD has standardized. That limit has just about become meaningless. SACDs can only fit about 70-some minutes on a disc. But SACDs with regular definition content can fit up to ten hours. If audio-only BluRay discs become common, the limit is even higher (will we complain then, if the music on one disc doesn't max out the storage capacity?), but more likely the very idea of “capacity” is going to go, as we are moving towards streaming, downloading, and media servers. The blurb on press flyer justifying the short playing time doesn't even go into that, but is just as right: “We deemed it appropriate not to dilute the impact of these two works by adding any filler, just to get to a greater play time for this SACD.” Bravo!
I've written about the concert from where this CD was recorded here. Elliot Carter's Cello Concerto with its searching and confused solo cello opening—courtesy Jan Vogler—is pierced by orchestra stabs that are as short as they are vigorous, which then mellow considerably as they travel through the orchestral sections one by one. The orchestra has one surprising moment approximating lyricism, the cello part is often barely played, timidly screeching like cats at night with broken hearts. Atypical for Carter, the meandering work makes it difficult to perceive any musical purpose or goal, though the end has a coy smile that gives Carter, even at his most modern, that human touch that many of his modernist colleagues lack. By the way: Happy Birthday Eliot!
Still more intriguing on this disc is Udo Zimmermann's Cello Concerto “Songs from an Island” which received its world premiere performance here, under Kristjan Järvi and with Vogler. Zimmermann is in charge of the Musica Viva series, so seeing a composition of his at his 'own' event—though the first in over a decade—wasn't terribly surprising. The work itself, its quality and listenability, is surprising though. It starts with lengthy, fragmented quotes from Schumann's "I cried in a dream" (Dichterliebe, op.48) which allow the cello to do what it can do best: sing. While the cello is almost incidental to Carter's concerto (any instrument—a dulcimer, for example—might have served equally well), here it is stipulated by Zimmermann's music. Purpose, truth's little cousin, is established and the mind can begin to grasp and the ears can go on a journey with the composer. Zimmermann hides behind Schumann for the beauty; typical of the reflexive cowardice of modern(ist) European composers when it comes to musical consonance. “Is that allowed? Is this an Anti-Concerto” his notes at the concert disingenuously questioned and eagerly postulated. But better beauty and purpose under a pretense than not at all, and that's what we get: the concerto is gorgeous, even when it gets busy, noisy, and tangled. Via perceptible ideas and motifs, through recognizability and musical craftsmanship Udo Zimmermann has arrived, if not at truth, so at least in reality.