Piano Concerto - Elliott Carter

Описание: Basel Sinfonietta conducted by Joel Smirnoff. Charles Rosen as the pianist.

I - Fantastico - Tempo I. Allegro vivace - Tempo II. Poco meno mosso, moderato - Tempo I. Allegro vivace - Tempo III. Più moderato - Più presto - Tempo III. Più moderato - Più presto - Tempo IV. Meno presto- Vivo subito - Tempo II. Meno mosso - Tempo I. Allegro vivace - Molto moderato - Tempo II. Poco meno moderato - (Tempo I) Più allegro - Tempo III. Meno mosso - Poco più vivace - Poco più mosso - Tempo I. Allegro vivace - Più presto - Tempo I. Allegro vivace: 0:00
II - Tempo I. Allegro vivace (piano) / Molto giusto e deciso, sempre (orchestra) - Tempo V. Allegro non troppo - Tempo II. Moderato - Tempo IV. Molto più lento - Più allegro - Acora più vivace - Tempo I - Tempo IV. Poco meno - Tempo II. Moderato - Più mosso - Tempo II. Moderato - Tempo V. Più allegro - Tempo II. Moderato - Subito vivo - Un pochissimo meno mosso (optional) - Poco più presto - Tempo I. Allegro vivace: 10:28

Carter's Piano Concerto was composed between 1964-5, being commissioned by the pianist Jacob Lateiner with support from the Ford Foundation. It was premiered on January 6 of 1967, performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Erich Leinsdorf, with Lateiner as the pianist. The piece was dedicated to the composer Igor Stravinsky for his 85th birthday.

Written during a stay in Berlin, the concerto is a tragic, even violent, piece that fuses the composer's love of formal, rhythmic, and harmonic complexity with a deeply human sense of contemporary social and political concerns. From the opening bars it is apparent that the orchestra and soloist are in active contention with one another. The solo writing is no mere elaboration of material presented by the orchestra, as one might expect of a more traditionally cast concerto; indeed, the antagonism between the two forces is emphasized by the composer's instruction to spatially separate the piano and orchestra.

There is also a third party involved, a small concertino of seven players situated directly around the piano, which functions as a hard-working, if ultimately unsuccessful, intermediary between the warring bodies. The work is constructed upon a principle, which the composer borrowed from the works of his early mentor Charles Ives: several musical layers, representing different spatial, temporal, or even philosophical, planes, are presented simultaneously. Thus, the Piano Concerto is really two irreconcilably different pieces of music forced into the same temporal space; for attentive listeners, the resulting conflict is electric.

The first movement opens with the piano and concertino stating ideas derived from a triad shape (C, F#, G) and the three speeds and characters associated with it. This is answered briefly by the orchestra using material from one of its triads (G, Db, F). Later these two triads, which are the primary ones for the orchestra and piano, each join three others from their respective instrumental groups to form one twelve-note chord for the soloists and another of different character for the orchestra, the alternation of which constitutes the conclusion of the first movement, summarizing in brief all the various expressive characters that have been brought into increasingly sharp focus and contrast.

The second movement starts where the first ends with the orchestra introducing bit by bit its two main new features: regularly accented beats of many different speeds and ever-changing soft string chords which form the background of the piano’s increasingly impulsive and passionate recitative which emerges from the material of the first movement. This recitative is interrupted here and there by the concertino, particularly by cadenzas of the three wind soloists who, like Job’s friend, sympathize and comment. This large section is brought to an end by a coda of fast altercations between the piano with concertino and the orchestra. The work concludes with a brief passage by the soloist.

Picture: "Circles in a Circle" (1923) by the Russian-French painter Wassily Kandinsky.

Sources: https://bit.ly/3SZUqNu and https://bit.ly/3rQ2sMU

To check the score: https://bit.ly/3EHX4mC