Elliott Carter Edgard Varese Pierre Boulez - Elliott Carter A Symphony of Three Orchestras Varse Deserts Ecuatorial Hyperprism (4 tracks) +Album Reviews

Good Disc for Headphones.

Karl Henzy | 12/22/1998

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Carter's Symphony for Three Orchestras is quite simply one of the most spectacular works of orchestral music of this century. If you listen to it with headphones, you can actually here the music being passed around the three orchestras. It's almost too much for the brain--with dazzling, virtuoso riffs coming from all sides and overlapping to make a dense, rich tapestry. Some stunning individual moments emerge, too--such as the trumpet solo emulating the seagull's flight at the beginning (the work is based on Harte Crane's epic poem The Bridge), or the bell-like ringing on the piano towards the end, or the tremendous orchestral thunderclaps. The Varese works are a nice addition--Hyperprism is from V's early violent noise/music experiments, while the other works are from his later, more atmospheric-mysterious phase. A good disc, all in all. Five stars if it were all Carter."

Fantastic Carter and Varese, strangely combined

R. Hutchinson | a world ruled by fossil fuels and fossil minds | 08/05/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Though the combination of Carter and Varese is odd, I can't see giving this disc, part of the superb Sony PIERRE BOULEZ series, anything less than 5 stars. It is the only available recording of Carter's "Symphony for Three Orchestras" (1976 -- 15'41), and the Varese is uniformly excellent as well. It strikes me as simultaneously bizarre and marvelous that Carter's work, which was written to celebrate the American Bicentennial, with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, was commissioned by Pierre Boulez! Boulez was then the conductor of the New York Philharmonic. The piece is based on Hart Crane's poem "The Bridge." It is a tragic vision of America, and the music begins in the highest registers, and descends until, with a series of violent crashes, it ends in the lowest registers with tuba and double bass.

In the SYMPHONY, like Stockhausen's GRUPPEN, Carter divides the orchestra into three groups, and each group plays four movements, so the result is 12 overlapping movements in all. The recording of the NYP is from 2/22/77, and who better than Boulez to produce a crystal-clear rendering of this teeming complexity! There is only one thing that I would change, and that is that the piece is too short.

Here's a fantastic quote from Carter from the liner notes: "I do not want to give the impression of a simultaneous motion in which everybody's part is coordinated like a goose step. I do not want to write the kind of music that just marches on and marches off. I want it to seem like a crowd of people, or like waves on the sea -- all things that signify a much more fluid, and, to me, more human way of living."

There is an entire disc of Varese in this series, and so what is included here is really Part II -- the lead composition in the other disc (Part I) is "Arcana" (see my review). This material is just as good, and while some complain that Boulez left the electronics out of "Deserts," I say enjoy it as is -- if you didn't know about the electronics, you'd think it sounded great, which it does."

A tape piece without a tape?

R. Hutchinson | 12/08/1999

(3 out of 5 stars)

"I too wish this disc were all Carter. The Varese is a little disappointing. (The disc is also short.) The "Deserts" recorded here inexplicably removes the tape parts that (usually) give it its distinctive flavor. Those interested in Varese may therefore want to look instead to the Chailly set on London."

Whispers antiphonal in azure swing.

Giordano Bruno | Wherever I am, I am. | 05/22/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"That's the final line of Hart Crane's enormously beautiful and difficult poem, The Bridge, which Elliot Carter chose as the inspiration for his equally beautiful Symphony for Three Orchestras. Carter was apparently fascinated by Crane's poetry, with its splintery imagery and jazz-age rhythms. I'm glad the notes alerted me, however, to the connections, since no words of the poem are incorporated in this instrumental panoply of sounds.

Hart Crane was my favorite poet when I was 20. I understood him then. Judging by what critics write of him today, I should say I misunderstood him then. The critics declare that Crane was lamenting the decline of American vision and promise into industrial soullessness. I heard Crane singing a paean of beauty - a vague paean, mind, but full of exultation. I hear a vibrant, exulting beauty in the music of Elliot Carter also. Perhaps I've got it all wrong. If so, don't disillusion me.

The Symphony OF Three Orchestras is a composition for three ensembles on one stage. The ensembles, chiefly melodic percussion, each play four movements of a structure at least suggestive of the traditional symphony, but each ensemble begins its movement while the previous ensemble is finishing, creating an overlapping kaleidoscopic sound. Carter declares that the listener is not expected to hear thematic development as such, but rather a fluid, human way of sounding, "like a crowd of people or waves on the sea." Well now, I suspect most people will first hear waves indeed, of beautiful noise without any clear structural intention. That may be enough to be pleasant listening. There is more to the music than rippling sounds, I promise. The deeper you listen, the more you'll hear, but don't try to write an essay about it. Like my last essay on Hart Crane, your attempt to verbalize your appreciation might come back to you with a C+.

The three pieces by Edgar Varese don't excite me as much. I'd be pleased enough by them in concert, but I wouldn't remember them long. Varese was cutting-edge in his use of electronic instruments, as Carter has been in his use of melodic percussion. Conductor Pierre Boulez acknowledges both Varese and Carter as influences on his work, so perhaps that's why they have been assembled together on this CD.

This is the only recording of Carter's Symphony of Three Orchestras, so it's hard to evaluate the skill of the performers. Hey, they sound like they mean to be playing what they play! I've performed similar music with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and other groups, and I can say candidly that interpretation begins with confidence in the notes. If anyone has that interpretational confidence, surely it would be Pierre Boulez.

Elliot Carter has a reputation as a composer's composer, a formidable intellectual sort of music-maker. Don't let it worry you. This CD is music for the senses."

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	Elliott Carter, Edgard Varese, Pierre Boulez Elliott Carter: A Symphony of Three Orchestras; Varèse: Deserts; Ecuatorial; Hyperprism Genres: Pop, Classical Track Listings (4) - Disc #1 A Symphony of Three Orchestras D?serts for brass, percussion, piano & tape Ecuatorial, for bass, chorus, brass, piano, organ, 2 ondes martenots & percussion Hyperprisme, for winds and percussion
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