Elliott Carter

CD and DVD

DOCUMENTARY DVD INCLUDED

Elliott Carter in Toronto in 2006

- Introduction by Robert Aitken

- Elliott Carter in conversation with Robert Aitken

- Excerpts from the composer’s works recorded on the CD

Naxos is delighted to present this special birthday tribute to one of the leading composers of our time. The release comprises a full length CD and DVD release for a very special price.

Twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, first composer to receive the United States National Medal of Arts, one of the few composers ever awarded Germany's Ernst Von Siemens Music Prize, and in 1988 made ‘Commandeur dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres’ by the Government of France, Elliott Carter is internationally recognized as one of the leading American voices of the classical music tradition.

“Elliott Carter is one of America’s most distinguished creative artists in any field” Aaron Copland nominating Elliott Carter for the Gold Medal of the National Institute of Arts and Letters for Eminence in Music (1971)

"Elliott Carter is the one of America's most distinguished creative artist in any field." - Aaron Copland nominating Elliott Carter for the "Gold Medal of the National Institute of Arts and Letters for Eminence in Music" (1971). Two important pieces of the American composer - who won the Pulitzer Prize twice - are now available on CD (re-release of WERGO LP WER 60124): "In Sleep, In Thunder" and "Triple Duo". "In Sleep, In Thunder" is a setting of six poems by the late Robert Lowell and composed "in memory of the poet and friend". Black comic parodies and ice-cold irony determine the atmosphere of the six songs. For Carter the way out of the black world of the Lowell cycle was "Triple Duo", a work whose comic mood appears in its very opening where the players are caught in the act of warming up before beginning. The Fires of London - The London Sinfonietta

To celebrate his 100th birthday, Elliott Carter’s Complete String Quartets have been newly recorded by the Pacifica Quartet, Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year for 2009.

Volume 1 (8559362) was critically acclaimed: “a knockout” (Limelight), “Music with heart as well as a brain” (4 STARS, The Times), “the best possible introduction to Carter’s music” (5 STARS, The Guardian) and has recently been nominated for a 2009 Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Recording.

This disc presents the three remaining string quartets by the composer hailed by Aaron Copland as “one of America’s most distinguished creative artists in any field”.

For this album of music by Elliott Carter, cellist Johannes Martens has assembled some of Norway’s foremost young musicians. Tracing Carter’s development through some of his most creative period, these works span over 50 years of composition, from the beautiful Elegy and the celebrated Cello Sonata through to newer pieces for solo instruments, duo, trio and string quartet, they show the mark of a supremely experienced craftsman.

Released to celebrate the American master Elliott Carter’s centenary, this is the first of two discs of the complete String Quartets. Carter himself has written: ‘I probably decided to write what was to be the First Quartet when I read about a composition prize in Liege, Belgium, because there are many ideas swarming around in my imagination about expression, rhythm and harmony mostly derived from my Cello Sonatas …. Then my Second, Third, and Fourth Quartets developed my imaginings in different ways until I began to realise that soon I would exhaust this direction, and so my Fifth Quartet became a farewell to the previous four and an exploration of a new vision’