Oppens plays Carter

This CD of the complete music for solo piano by Elliott Carter, (b. 1908) offers the opportunity to get to know some of the most difficult and challenging works, musically and technically, for the instrument in American music. Although he has not written extensively for solo piano, Carter's two large works for the instrument, the Sonata (1946) and the "Night Fantasies" (1980) are extraordinary compositions. The pianist Ursula Oppens is a long-time champion of Carter and other contemporary composers. During last year's centennial of Carter's birth, Oppens performed his works tirelessly in recitals as well as releasing this disk on the Cedille label. She offers here what may well become definitive readings of this music.

In his youth, Carter was a friend and protégé of Charles Ives, and he went on to a long and varied career. Carter's two-movement piano sonata was written before he found his own distinctive musical voice. It belongs with the earlier American piano sonatas of Ives, Copland, and Barber and shares a great deal with them. Carter's sonata is clearly a 20th Century work. The sonata opens with a slow, dramatic theme marked "Maestoso" before moving to a faster and more rhythmically and harmonically challenging second group. Both themes are developed and intertwined as the movement proceeds, almost as in the manner of a more traditional sonata. The second movement of the sonata is highlighted by a lengthy, furious fugue surrounded by more quiet opening and closing material. This sonata is a difficult and imposing.

When Carter wrote his second lengthy piano piece, the "Night Fantasies", he had mastered the musical style that he had developed beginning in the early 1950s. Carter described this work as a "piano piece of continually changing moods, suggesting the fleeting thoughts and feelings that pass through the mind during a period of wakefulness and night." This work makes heavy demands on the performer and listener. The work includes unusual atonal harmonies based upon the use of what are described as 88 separate all-interval chords. The work is also rhythmically complex as the two hands of the piano play throughout in different tempos. They come together only two times during the work. The rhythm and the mood of the piece shift repeatedly and abruptly during its course. The themes are fragmentary and shifting but they build to the development of a mood. For all its difficulty, "Night Fantasies" is romantic rather than cerebral in character. In listening to it several times, I responded to its idiom without troubling myself with the technicalities of its composition. The music captures for me the change, restlessness, complexity, and moods of life in a large American city at night. It is captivating.

The remaining works on this CD are shorter pieces that generally date from the latter part of Carter's career. They show a good deal of whimsy. The best of these works include "90 +" which dates from 1994 and was composed to celebrate the 90th birthday of a friend. It features 90 and more staccato notes played over a shifting chordal background. "Matribute" (2007), begins with a light fragmentary theme which picks up in intensity. The work was written to celebrate the birthday of the mother of the famous conductor, James Levine. The "Two Thoughts about the Piano" (2005-2006), consist of two contrasting pieces, the first of which "Intermittences"is full of heavy, discordant chords and shifting rhythms while the second, "Catenaires" is a rapid linear, perpetuum mobile piece with long passages consisting of a succession of single notes moving over the entire keyboard.

Many music lovers remain reluctant to approach these difficult pieces. Carter's is a distinct voice which I think tries to capture the liveliness, change and passion of modern life with romance but without sentimentality. This is music for adventurous listeners who are not put off by discordance and for those listeners wanting to understand a contemporary musical idiom.

Robin Friedman

writing a review of this seems fairly inconsequential, if I projected negative-isms would that dilute the lines of receipts? or interest?, I would not only be required to apologize for negative quips, but seek counseling,for some pathological illness, some cognitive mis-firings within my listening constitution;

Most of this has all been recorded before,so afficiandos can compare;I try not to, I like Oppens full-tilt from the beginning;Rzewski(a Carter student) got me on Oppens and again you get the centerpiece of Carter, the "Night Fantasies", try to listen for the long-range polyrhythms over the entire work,try John Link, he can explain it; some odd ratio 179:124,happening over 20 minutes; aside from that Oppens plays beautifully impassioned,never compromising the complex edifice of the work; there is a thin line in Carter between an over-romanticized readings,and too, too lontano;prior we usually find in symphony players with a few rehearsals, who Brahms-sify Carter;a detestable situation makes me run for the door;"Night Fantasies" has just enough reference points to arouse your imagination,with strong powers of "cognitive mappings" to the piano's genres, of nocturne,and Schumann,spatiality of resonance;the fragmented romantic,mid-century;yet within a modernist perspective;Carter can be overly dry,and you need to be mindful of this as you rehearse him; I prefer hearing thess piano solos in CD format, breaking orthodoxy,the clarity is overwhelming, and you would never hear these clear crystal shapes in a live concert hall, with all that useless resonance; We have become "Earworms"ourselves living within our heads for music, as opposed to sitting in a collective thrash in a hall.

The earlier "Piano Sonata",has that fierce-ness, the melos never stops, part of the unknown times of Americana, in which it was written, to boldly go ahead, yet there are predictable shapes, rotund projections which again Oppens pulls off with conviction, clarity.

"90-plus" is also a nice piece to hear and for analysis, differing ranges spectrums of articulations, nice "etude"for resonances, particles and fragments take their own time to be deployed; for the aspiring new music piano performer this is a great piece to contemplate,

I don't care much for Carter past this point,90-plus-minus; his music came to have an accessibility factor,almost have-a-nice-day, I guess that comes from increase exposure to the concert public, they make you love them and the devoted cadres who play music;this music is not as complex in structural vigour,nor as anything prior, so all these short piano pieces, are good as encores, and not worth study, good teaching pieces; and a quick way to get into the aesthetic of late-late-late Carter without the ambition to learn the durational challenges of the longer works;Oppens bring a maturity to reading these pieces, she has been devoted to this music of Carter's symbolic order for decades; So this permeates through what she plays and how she plays it, there is a durational reference,that is quite unique, anyone else would perhaps be more distant, lontano to the music materials deployed;