The premiere recording of the first-ever opera by America’s greatest living composer, released to coincide with his 95th birthday, is a major new music event. Going against the archetypes of “late work”, Carter’s opera is spirited, energetic, full of power. As The Economist recently observed, “Today Elliott Carter is writing music of dazzling brilliance and subtlety: this is an invigorating explosion of creativity.” Peter Eötvös draws superlative performances from a gifted cast.
Elliott Carter / Paul Griffiths: What Next?
Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra, Peter Eötvös
- 1What next?
40:07 - 2Asko Concerto
12:01
So much of Elliott Carter’s music in the past 40 years has involved instrumental role-playing that it was strange he never composed an opera until he was almost 90. “What Next?”, with a libretto by Paul Griffiths, was first staged in Berlin in 1999, and this excellent recording was made at a concert performance in Amsterdam the following year. The situation is straightforward – six people, five adults and a child, have been involved in a road accident; they are all disoriented, and have to sort out where they were going, who with, and what they intended to do. The effect is like an ensemble from a comic opera blown up to 40 minutes; the action is inconsequential and deliberately open-ended, but the orchestral backdrop, a typical late Carter web of glistening instrumental lines, is exquisite. In the “Asko Concerto”, written immediately after the opera, those instrumental webs move into the spotlight in a series of interlinked short movements in which every proportion is perfect.
Andrew Clements, The Guardian
Carter made history by writing his first opera at 90, but it lacks for nothing in vitality and, indeed, is one of the most original operas I know. A single 40-minute act, with a libretto by Paul Griffiths, it turns the car crash from Jacques Tati’s film Traffic into an abstract drama about time, space, uncertainty and operatic convention. … Carter has always written for instruments operatically; now he lends opera the mercurial magic of his ensemble works, one of which, the “Asko Concerto”, is appended here.
Paul Driver, Sunday Times
Set in the immediate aftermath of a road accident and inspired by Jacques Tati’s “Trafic”, Elliott Carter’s witty debut opera “What Next?” explodes from a single stuttering syllable to reveal six fractious characters caught in a half-comic, half-tragic state of chaotic inertia. An astringent tour de force from the nonagenarian American genius, moments of lyricism – embodied, typically for Carter, by an oboe – are as rare here as they are delicious, while the scorching counterpoint of air and metal that dominates the opera is brutally energetic. The recording itself does full justice to Paul Griffiths’s virtuosic libretto and is beautifully clean and well-balanced. Under conductor/composer Peter Eötvös, the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra play with sublime precision and character.
Anna Picard, Independent On Sunday
Paul Griffiths’s libretto toys ingeniously with word and idea, and Carter’s voice-dominated music is a brilliant whirligig of ensembles, intercutting solos, lurching rhythms and dazzling colours. Under Peter Eötvös’s direction the cast in this live performance is brilliant, as is the orchestra, which also gives a glittering reading of the ornate, elegant Asko Concerto.
Stephen Pettitt, Evening Standard
Mittlerweile ist Elliott Carter fünfundneunzig und hat seine Oper in einem Akt für Berlin geschrieben. Sie wurde 1999 von Daniel Barenboim uraufgeführt und ist jetzt, rechtzeitig zum Geburtstag des Komponisten, bei ECM in München in einer vorbildlichen Aufnahme mit dem Niederländischen Radio-Kammerorchester unter dem Dirigenten Peter Eötvös erschienen. Es geht darin um einen Autounfall, den die sechs Insassen zwar überleben, aber dabei ihr Gedächtnis verlieren. Sie lallen Silben, stochern in den Tönen ihrer Gesangslinien, verhaken sich kontrapunktisch ineinander, als habe der Crash die vokalen Motive wie das Auto zu einem Schrotthaufen verbogen, bis man entdeckt, dass auf höchst subtile und vertrackte Weise musikalisch jeder für sich kommuniziert. Absurdes Theater, als habe Eugène Ionesco dem Komponisten über die Schulter geblickt.
Wolfgang Sandner, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Mr. Carter’s remarkable nonagenarian Indian summer continues unabated, and the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra’s ECM recording of his first opera, „What Next?“, finished when he was a mere 90, illuminates this dazzling and allusive piece, set in the aftermath of a car crash. The piece is as convincing on disc as it is on the concert platform, and the music, especially the vocal writing for the sextet of characters, is Mr. Carter at his most playful, virtuosic and profound. The composer’s Asko concerto completes the CD: music of buoyant, joyous fluency, played with startling immediacy by the Dutch players, conducted by Peter Eötvös.
The Economist
Dass sich Komponisten für die Gattung Opern nicht sonderlich interessieren, kommt häufiger vor. Dass jedoch ein Komponist im biblischen Alter von 90 Jahren erstmals für die Bühne komponiert, gab es vor Elliott Carter noch nicht. Hatte er zuvor stets behauptet, die Komposition einer Oper sei mit zu viel Arbeit verbunden und die Opernorchester seien zu wenig vertraut mit der Neuen Musik, gelang es Daniel Barenboim schließlich, Carter dazu zu bewegen, einen Kompositionsauftrag der Deutschen Staatsoper Berlin anzunehmen, wo das Werk 1999 seine Uraufführung erlebte... Dieses Konversationsstück lebt vom Wechsel zwischen skurrilen Monologen und packend gestalteten Duetten, Terzetten und Ensembleszenen. Carter stellt die Stimmen in den Vordergrund und komponiert eine ausgesprochen sangliche und zugleich hoch komplexe Musik. Das hervorragend besetzte Gesangsensemble bringt diese Partitur zum Leuchten, ja zum Glühen. Das bis auf den Schlagzeugapparat klein besetzte Orchester bleibt meist im Hintergrund oder liefert das klangliche Fundament für die sich virtuos entfaltenden Singstimmen.
Martin Demmler, Fono Forum
Ein Autounfall. Perkussion, aber lyrisch. Sechs Überlebende, davon ein Kind. „What Next?“ fragt Elliott Carter in seinem Operndebüt, das er im Alter von 90 Jahren komponierte. ... Die sechs Menschen palavern in den schönsten Arien wobei die Vokalparts selbst aufgeregte dramatis personae sind, während das Orchester polyphon das Szenario umhüllt. Eine sehr bewegliche, sinnliche Musik, wodurch die seltsamen Charaktere verstärkt werden. Peter Eötvös hat mit dem niederländischen Ensemble „What Next“ sehr wirkungsvoll als imaginatives Musiktheater aufgeführt.
Das „Asko Concerto“ ist in Elliott Carters Worten eine Art Concerto grosso für wechselnde Besetzungen. Sinnliche und zugleich artifizielle Figurationen drängen mit pulsierendem Druck voran, schlagen Bögen und bilden vibrierende Klangnetze. Beide Werke haben nichts von Alterstrübsinn, im Gegenteil: Elliott Carter ist im Geist ein munterer Rebell. Energisch späht er nach unverbrauchter Rhetorik und frischen Formen in der Neuen Musik.
Hans-Dieter Grünefeld, Musik & Theater
“The score's unceasing flow is one indicator of its refinement, others being the fastidious blend of tone-colour and Carter's spare, late, scintillating polyphony... One takes away the impression of an opera whose exploitation of ensemble-singing is radically new.”
Sunday Times
Released in time for the 95th birthday (on December 11th) of America’s greatest composer, this ECM New Series release is comprised of two premiere recordings. Both of them – the one-act opera “What Next?” and the Asko Concerto, a virtuoso ensemble piece – testify to the sustained inventiveness of Elliott Carter. As the Economist recently noted, “Today Carter is writing music of dazzling brilliance and subtlety: music that speaks with a playful and even youthful directness. His productivity has increased as he has struck into new fields and forms, pouring forth a stream of pieces… No world-weary swansong, this is an invigorating explosion of creativity.” In his liner note for the acclaimed ECM Carter/Yun collection “Lauds & Lamentation” issued earlier this year, Heinz Holliger spoke of “the miracle of Elliott Carter’s later works”: “With ever more wondrous serenity and freedom, he is creating music whose complexity attains an almost Mozartian oneness with the work and reveals itself quite simply and naturally to the responsive ear of the listener.”
Mr Carter, in a recent interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, attributed his new prolificness to a change of emphasis in the work. “I’ve become more concerned with the expression of music and less with the formation of details. I’m trying to be more spontaneous…” Spontaneous, and fast-moving. “In general, my music seeks the awareness of motion we have in flying or driving a car, and not the plodding of horses, or the marching of soldiers that pervades the motion patterns of older music.”
“What Next?” Carter’s first opera, written in 1997 and 1998, begins with a car crash and follows, obliquely, the development of six survivors crawling from the wreckage. The chain of events has a dreamlike quality. “The survivors are five adults and a child. Mama (a dramatic soprano) is the most insistent of them: as she understands things, the adults were all on their way to the marriage of her son, a clownish baritone who calls himself Harry or Larry, to Rose, a self-absorbed performing artist (a lyric soprano). The glib guru-like tenor Zen is Mama’s former husband, and the astronomer Stella (a contralto) is his current girl friend. The sixth figure, Kid, a twelve-year-old boy alto, is a mystery to Mama, who repeatedly tries to focus everyone’s attention on their joint predicament. While the others generally concede that Mama’s assessment of their relationships may be correct, they have other agendas. Zen seeks to maintain his status as ‘a teacher, a master.’ Rose doesn’t really care who the others are; she is still grooving on the triumph of her last performance, and expects the others to be similarly appreciative. Stella thinks she was on her way to work at her astronomical observatory. Harry or Larry doesn’t care. Eventually, two Road Workers arrive and poke around in the percussive wreckage, initially ignoring the importuning of the crash victims, who finally walk away, still disputatiously engaged.”(David Hamilton, in the CD booklet notes).
“Carter's music, from the opening crash of the prelude, remains active throughout the entire single act - in the spasms and splinterings of the percussion, where the coalescing of the sounds are continually being torn asunder again... So the central interlude of the work provides a great surprise: the lost characters abandon the stage, the dreamlike scenery becomes even more unreal, the wrecked car seems to explode in slow motion. Here Carter suddenly develops, in extraordinarily skilfully constructed music, a powerful sense of poetry, whose magic is sustained through soft sounds and melodic lines. It is the sound of transformation...” Wolfgang Schreiber, Süddeutsche Zeitung
Words for the opera were written by Paul Griffiths, the British novelist and music critic (and librettist of Tan Dun’s “Marco Polo”) who has long been one of the most astute commentators on contemporary composition. Griffiths understands Carter’s oeuvre well. In fact, the lively, argumentative nature of the text helps to elucidate the way in which the composer’s music works. Carter has often described his instrumental works as scenarios to be acted out by performers; the defining of character roles within the opera makes this more explicit.
“An astounding composition of great mastery, impact and originality… ‘What Next?’ is a masterly study in human expression…Paul Griffiths’s tersely lyrical libretto is excellent, and Carter has responded with a score teeming with drama, invention, colour, pace, instrumental personification, characterisation, psychological insight, and a finely communicative penetration of the characters’ minds…” Robert Matthew-Walker, Musical Opinion
“What Next?” was first performed in Berlin in 1999. The present recording of the opera was made the following year during a live performance at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, with the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra brilliantly directed by Peter Eötvös. “What Next?” has also been staged or semi-staged in New York, Chicago, Berkeley, Paris, London, and Bruge, with conductors including Daniel Barenboim (who commissioned the work), Kent Nagano and Oliver Knussen.
After completing the opera, Carter received a commission from the Dutch ASKO Ensemble, and subsequently wrote his Asko Concerto in New York City in January 2000. Of the work, the composer writes, “My Asko Concerto for sixteen players features each one of them participating in one of the following groups – two trios, two duos, a quintet or a solo. These six sections are framed by the entire group playing together. Although the music is in lighthearted mood, each solistic section approaches ensemble playing in a different spirit.”
Sunday Times
Released in time for the 95th birthday (on December 11th) of America’s greatest composer, this ECM New Series release is comprised of two premiere recordings. Both of them – the one-act opera “What Next?” and the Asko Concerto, a virtuoso ensemble piece – testify to the sustained inventiveness of Elliott Carter. As the Economist recently noted, “Today Carter is writing music of dazzling brilliance and subtlety: music that speaks with a playful and even youthful directness. His productivity has increased as he has struck into new fields and forms, pouring forth a stream of pieces… No world-weary swansong, this is an invigorating explosion of creativity.” In his liner note for the acclaimed ECM Carter/Yun collection “Lauds & Lamentation” issued earlier this year, Heinz Holliger spoke of “the miracle of Elliott Carter’s later works”: “With ever more wondrous serenity and freedom, he is creating music whose complexity attains an almost Mozartian oneness with the work and reveals itself quite simply and naturally to the responsive ear of the listener.”
Mr Carter, in a recent interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, attributed his new prolificness to a change of emphasis in the work. “I’ve become more concerned with the expression of music and less with the formation of details. I’m trying to be more spontaneous…” Spontaneous, and fast-moving. “In general, my music seeks the awareness of motion we have in flying or driving a car, and not the plodding of horses, or the marching of soldiers that pervades the motion patterns of older music.”
“What Next?” Carter’s first opera, written in 1997 and 1998, begins with a car crash and follows, obliquely, the development of six survivors crawling from the wreckage. The chain of events has a dreamlike quality. “The survivors are five adults and a child. Mama (a dramatic soprano) is the most insistent of them: as she understands things, the adults were all on their way to the marriage of her son, a clownish baritone who calls himself Harry or Larry, to Rose, a self-absorbed performing artist (a lyric soprano). The glib guru-like tenor Zen is Mama’s former husband, and the astronomer Stella (a contralto) is his current girl friend. The sixth figure, Kid, a twelve-year-old boy alto, is a mystery to Mama, who repeatedly tries to focus everyone’s attention on their joint predicament. While the others generally concede that Mama’s assessment of their relationships may be correct, they have other agendas. Zen seeks to maintain his status as ‘a teacher, a master.’ Rose doesn’t really care who the others are; she is still grooving on the triumph of her last performance, and expects the others to be similarly appreciative. Stella thinks she was on her way to work at her astronomical observatory. Harry or Larry doesn’t care. Eventually, two Road Workers arrive and poke around in the percussive wreckage, initially ignoring the importuning of the crash victims, who finally walk away, still disputatiously engaged.”(David Hamilton, in the CD booklet notes).
“Carter's music, from the opening crash of the prelude, remains active throughout the entire single act - in the spasms and splinterings of the percussion, where the coalescing of the sounds are continually being torn asunder again... So the central interlude of the work provides a great surprise: the lost characters abandon the stage, the dreamlike scenery becomes even more unreal, the wrecked car seems to explode in slow motion. Here Carter suddenly develops, in extraordinarily skilfully constructed music, a powerful sense of poetry, whose magic is sustained through soft sounds and melodic lines. It is the sound of transformation...” Wolfgang Schreiber, Süddeutsche Zeitung
Words for the opera were written by Paul Griffiths, the British novelist and music critic (and librettist of Tan Dun’s “Marco Polo”) who has long been one of the most astute commentators on contemporary composition. Griffiths understands Carter’s oeuvre well. In fact, the lively, argumentative nature of the text helps to elucidate the way in which the composer’s music works. Carter has often described his instrumental works as scenarios to be acted out by performers; the defining of character roles within the opera makes this more explicit.
“An astounding composition of great mastery, impact and originality… ‘What Next?’ is a masterly study in human expression…Paul Griffiths’s tersely lyrical libretto is excellent, and Carter has responded with a score teeming with drama, invention, colour, pace, instrumental personification, characterisation, psychological insight, and a finely communicative penetration of the characters’ minds…” Robert Matthew-Walker, Musical Opinion
“What Next?” was first performed in Berlin in 1999. The present recording of the opera was made the following year during a live performance at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, with the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra brilliantly directed by Peter Eötvös. “What Next?” has also been staged or semi-staged in New York, Chicago, Berkeley, Paris, London, and Bruge, with conductors including Daniel Barenboim (who commissioned the work), Kent Nagano and Oliver Knussen.
After completing the opera, Carter received a commission from the Dutch ASKO Ensemble, and subsequently wrote his Asko Concerto in New York City in January 2000. Of the work, the composer writes, “My Asko Concerto for sixteen players features each one of them participating in one of the following groups – two trios, two duos, a quintet or a solo. These six sections are framed by the entire group playing together. Although the music is in lighthearted mood, each solistic section approaches ensemble playing in a different spirit.”
Related Recordings
You need to load content from reCAPTCHA to submit the form. Please note that doing so will share data with third-party providers.
More InformationYou need to load content from Turnstile to submit the form. Please note that doing so will share data with third-party providers.
More InformationYou are currently viewing a placeholder content from Facebook. To access the actual content, click the button below. Please note that doing so will share data with third-party providers.
More InformationYou are currently viewing a placeholder content from Instagram. To access the actual content, click the button below. Please note that doing so will share data with third-party providers.
More InformationYou are currently viewing a placeholder content from X. To access the actual content, click the button below. Please note that doing so will share data with third-party providers.
More Information