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Elliott Carter has had an immensely creative and fruitful career, characterized by reams of excellent, challenging works for small ensembles, vocalists, soloists, and large orchestras. This collection of chamber music for wind instruments cuts a splendid swath across Carter's career, covering a period from the late 1940s to the early 1950s in detail and then leaping to his 1980s period for two short works. The earlier material--woodwind quintet, Eight Etudes and a Fantasy, and Sonata (to Kurt Stone)--bear traces of Carter's struggle with neoclassical styles, which he clearly knew inside and out and then examined in great depth for tonal implications, potential densities, and more. Ensemble Contrasts examines the works with all their own mixed expertise. They demonstrate the at once astonishingly dexterous and powerfully energetic nature of Carter's wind works, rarely treated with such vibrancy and perfection. This is defiantly American music, at times bent on individualism to the point that tones in the Esprit rude, for clarinet and flute and dedicated to Pierre Boulez, are furiously juxtaposed so that none concur. Though short, this is a smashing piece, worth the cost of the entire CD. --Andrew Bartlett