Ron Chaplin asked:

>Right now I'm listening to an Arte Nova CD of Elliot Carter's Orchestral
>music (SWF Symphony Orchestra; Michael Gielen, conductor; Ursula Oppens,
>Piano).  Perhaps I haven't listened to it enough, but I don't understand
>the music, either intellectually or emotionally.  I know there is
>something "there," but I don't know what.  Rather than dismiss the music
>out of hand, I would appreciate it if anyone could help me "get into"
>the music.

I listened to the Piano Concerto on this disk a few days ago, and also read
what the composer had to say:

   "...my Piano Concerto, which pits the 'crowd' of the orchestra against
   the piano's 'individual,' mediated by a concertino of seven soloists.
   Here, the conflict was conceived as one of orchestral music that
   becomes more and more insistent and brutal as the work continues,
   while the piano makes more and more of a case for variety, sensitivity,
   and imagination. Over a very long stretch of time in the second of
   the two movements, the orchestral strings build up more and more
   dense, softly held chords, which form a kind of suffocating blanket
   of sound, while at the same time the rest of the orchestra plays
   patterns of strict, regular beats that increase if forcefulness and
   are layered into more and more different speeds. Against all this,
   the piano and instrumental soloists play more expressive, varied
   music, ..."

I find the work one of the most impressive piano concertos I have heard
(which is not many), and the last movement as very impressive and moving.
I have never felt such an overwhelming sense of alienation.

I cannot understand why Americans don't boast loudly about Elliott Carter.

Dave Hardman <[log in to unmask]>
Canberra, Australia