Flute Concerto - Elliott Carter

BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Thierry Fischer. Emmanuel Pahud as the flautist.
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Carter's Flute Concerto was composed between September 2007 and March 2008, being a co-commission for the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It was premiered on September 9 of 2008, performed by said orchestra conducted by Daniel Darenboim, along with flautist Emmanuel Pahud.
Mr. Carter’s composer’s note for the piece reads almost like a mea culpa for not having written a flute concerto earlier. “I kept putting it off, because I felt that the flute could not produce the sharp attacks that I use so frequently,” he writes. “But the idea of the beautiful qualities of the different registers of the instrument and the extraordinary agility attracted me more and more.”
The work, scored for an ensemble including piano and percussion, was performed here by 22 players. It opens with startling, crisp orchestral chords that prod the flute into scurrying figures, quickly taken up by other instruments. The flute’s skittish riffs and winding lyrical lines sometimes ignite agitated orchestral responses; at other times they are cushioned by subdued, sustained harmonies. Even when the music breaks into a jumpy back-and-forth, the mood is industrious, not aggressive.
Mr. Carter’s language has lost none of its piercing, atonal bite. Yet like most of his works from his 90s and later, this score is less densely complex and layered than those from earlier decades. The enhanced clarity is a welcome turn, making it easier to hear Mr. Carter’s scintillating sonorities, myriad instrumental colours and complex rhythmic interplay.
About midway through the concerto, as the orchestra remains quite feisty, the flute, as if in its own zone, just keeps playing steady, pensive passages. Eventually the flute prevails, and the piece turns ruminative. But not for long. An extended, scherzo-like section full of fantastical flights takes off and builds to a final flourish of every-which-way spiralling figures.
Picture: "Improvisation. Gorge" (1914) by the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky.
Source: nyti.ms/3TtArXz
Unfortunately the score is not available.

[@orhantorunn]

switch at around 9' is incredibly beautiful

[@lelilleolee]

Colorful

[@stueystuey1962]

530 views in 9 months. The man is positively becoming a household name.

[@rdk1952]

Frankly I can't understand why this wonderful concerto hasn't attracted all kinds of attention -- and love.

[@stueystuey1962]

I agree. But such is the nature of serial music; listeners can't find an anchor so they simply abandon ship and run for cover each to their own comfort zone. Without qualification, EC is my favorite composer. Easily one of the goat's going back to the inception of classical music around the time of Hadyn.

[@jmchord]

You have great taste in music and paintings it seems my good friend

[@stueystuey1962]

The influence of Webern is undeniable. That said it is EC extending the logic ad infinitum.

[@machida5114]

sodelicious.................🙂

[@machida5114]

great music

[@coreylapinas1000]

It's just Schoenberg without the melodies.