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Album Summary
Performer
Jan Vogler (Cello)
Notes & Reviews:
The English conductor Oliver Knussen sees in Elliott Carter the "most important musical dramatist of the present age working in the area of instrumental composition". With his scores, Carter fashions dramatic scenarios in which instrumentalists act as individual characters. In his Cello Concerto, too, dating from 2001, he treats the soloist and the individual orchestra musicians as independent protagonists. Elliott Carter's compositions are metrically complex and labyrinthine in the way they are interlocked; they are impressive in their structural density and incredible virtuosity. We recognize the influences of neoclassicism and Schönbergian dodecaphony.
It was almost an "anti-concert": contrary to the usual solo concerto, in which the soloist is presented as someone who forms and shapes the music, in order to keep up - in a dramatic sense - a dialogue with the orchestra, we meet here the experienced opera composer Udo Zimmermann, who shifts these scenic elements towards the middle. With his score, the quiet notes dominate, and the opening is not only the most private kind of music, but a song whispered rather than a song sung.
"Some of the notes to this release are esoteric and ridiculous, so I will avoid them. Suffice it to say that Elliott Carter caught a new wind late in life. His music acquitted a contextual delineation in terms of the basic building blocks of his art (chordal and linear movement) that makes much of this later art easier to apprehend. For example, in this concerto the instrumental groups are easy to perceive, as they make their commentary on each conversational strand of information the cello utters. This is still very modern music, but Carter over time has found a way to bring it, at least partway, down to earth. The 20 minutes are worth every bit of attention you want to give them, and this proves one of the more easily decipherable of his recent pieces.
Udo Zimmermann's Songs from an Island take five separate texts as the basis for his concerto, centering on morning, night, and a sense of belonging. These textual images appear as cello commentary sometimes as melody that is clearly marked, other times not, but still leaves a flavoring of the unheard poetry by way of a remarkably communicative cantabile cello line with highly suggestive and sometimes very sparse accompaniment. Other times the orchestra takes the lead, expanding and even exploding the motives while the cello follows, but the interaction is always intense and primary, with Zimmermann using a wide variety of contrapuntal tricks to get his points across. This is a very entertaining (but not in a superficial manner) work of great insight and original design that will prove appealing to all but the most hardened of nothing-beyond baroque purists. Cellist Vogler plays beautifully. The live recording captures everything in fine detail with lots of presence and clarity, the surround just adding to the sonic excitement."-audaud.com
Recording information: Herkulessaal Der Residenz, Munich, Germany (05/15/2009).
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Works Details
Carter, Elliott : Concerto for Cello - Performer: Jan Vogler (Cello)
- Conductor: Kristjan Järvi
- Running Time: 21 min. 39 sec.
- Period Time: Modern
- Form: Concerto
- Written: 2000
Zimmermann, Udo : Concerto for cello & orchestra "Lieder von einer Insel" - Performer: Jan Vogler (Cello)
- Conductor: Kristjan Järvi
- Running Time: 16 min. 56 sec.
- Period Time: Contemporary
- Form: Concerto
