Elliott Carter comes to Aldeburgh

The Aldeburgh Festival joins in the Elliott Carter centenary celebrations with a series of inventively-programmed concerts and a visit from the composer himself.

Mosaic (2004) is tucked away in a pre-concert performance on June 20th, as a sort of prelude to one of the evening’s- if not the Festival’s - main events, the world premiere of Carter’s On Conversing with Paradise. In his tenth decade Carter often draws upon his rich store of memories to kindle ideas for new compositions. Mosaic recalls Carter’s old friend Carlos Salzedo (1885-1961), the French-American harpist, pianist and composer who had been active in Edgard Varèse’s International Composers’ Guild, and whom Carter had known in the 1930s. Scored for a chamber ensemble of winds, strings and harp, Mosaic also pays homage to Salzedo’s exploration of advanced playing techniques which helped to bring the harp into the world of twentieth century music. Also on the bill of this pre-concert performance is a new work by the young Canadian composer now living in London, Christopher Mayo, and a short piece by Oliver Knussen.

Louis Lortie is the soloist in the ferociously difficult Night Fantasies (1978-80) on June 23rd. Although Carter has composed a number of works with prominent piano parts, this was his first piece for the solo instrument since the Sonata some thirty years earlier. Night Fantasies was commissioned by four pianists – Paul Jacobs (who organised the project), Gilbert Kalish, Ursula Oppens and Charles Rosen – all experienced performers of Carter’s work. Identifying specific passages that might have been composed with the playing styles and personalities of each of the four in mind has become something of a musicological parlour game. More significant than any hidden code, however, is the sheer variety of the writing in this piece. David Schiff, who was studying with Carter at the time, explains, “Quite early in the course of composing the work he told me that he had already written fifty different kinds of piano music, and was now looking for ways to bring them together.”

Tamara Stefanovich plays two Carter miniatures for solo piano, in a concert scheduled during the afternoon of June 20th in the beautiful setting of Blytheburgh Church. The evening before George Benjamin will conduct the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the premiere of his own Duet for piano and orchestra, alongside Carter’s Three Occasions (1986-89). Although Carter generally conceived his works as unified wholes, these pieces only received their present title post facto. The third piece, Anniversary, was dedicated to his wife, Helen, in honour of their fiftieth wedding anniversary in 1989. Three Occasions was premiered by this same orchestra under Oliver Knussen in London’s Royal Festival Hall twenty years ago.

Carter’s attendance will make a unique occasion of the world premiere of his new song cycle, a setting of poems by Ezra Pound. The 20-minute work was commissioned by the Aldeburgh Festival and features baritone Leigh Melrose and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group conducted by Knussen. Carter sets parts of two of Pound's Cantos, where he despairs of not having written the perfect poem, which to him was paradise. The title On Conversing with Paradise is a quote from William Blake that Pound considered as a title for an early book of his own poems.

Elliott Carter’s centenary year of 2008 brought over 700 performances, according to Boosey & Hawkes. As these Aldeburgh concerts demonstrate, the celebrations continue alongside Carter’s own composition schedule. Figment V for marimba is premiered by Simon Boyar in New York on 2 May and the completed Poems of Louis Zukofsky for soprano and clarinet receives its first performance by Lucy Shelton and Stanley Drucker at the Tanglewood Festival on 9 August. The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s 2009/10 season includes the US premiere of the Flute Concerto on 4 February 2010 with soloist Elizabeth Rowe conducted by James Levine, as well as performances of Dialogues with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, artistic director of this Aldeburgh Festival.

Descriptions of Carter’s works abridged largely from Elliott Carter: A Centennial Portrait in Letters and Documents by Felix Meyer and Anne C Shreffler, published by the Boydell Press in association with the Paul Sacher Foundation, except for On Conversing with Paradise which was excerpted from the Boosey & Hawkes website. Some tickets remain for the Aldeburgh Festival and may be purchased online via their website. Festivalgoers may also be interested in The New Aldeburgh Anthology, in which an impressive collection of writers examine the history of the Festival and its connection to Benjamin Britten and his circle, as well as aspects of the Suffolk countryside and its history. Both of these books are available from good booksellers and from the new visitors’ centre at Snape Maltings, venue for most of the Festival.

Aldeburgh Country

Later this month the Boydell Press will, in association with Aldeburgh Music, publish a rather special volume, the New Aldeburgh Anthology compiled by Ariane Bankes and Jonathan Reekie. Taking its inspiration from Ronald Blythe’s classic Aldeburgh Anthology of the 1970s, this new publication brings the story of Aldeburgh and the Suffolk coast up to date just at the point when its identity might seem diluted by the accelerating pace of change.

Britten and Pears' Aldeburgh Festival lies at the heart of the book. Their legacy is re-examined by musicians such as Ian Bostridge, Steven Isserlis and Roger Vignoles, and music writers James Fenton, Paul Kildea, Peter Dickinson and Rupert Christiansen. Poets Andrew Motion, Blake Morrison, Kevin Crossley-Holland and Lavinia Greenlaw and other writers have all been inspired by the bright yet haunting atmosphere of the Suffolk coast; Maggi Hambling and Alison Wilding are sculptors who have left their mark on the landscape; while artists as varied as Sidney Nolan and John Piper, Arthur Boyd and Louise Wilson have all derived rich inspiration from it.

Here, to give a taste of the delights this book will offer, is a short extract from Ronald Blythe’s new preface:

This wonderful book could not have – in their wildest hopes for the future – been imagined by the three young men who, just after the war, determined to cease wandering and to settle for a music festival on the Suffolk coast. Neither they nor Aldeburgh itself could have foreseen what would flow from this decision, nor would they have given any thought to it. For them the excitement was in the present. The very austerity of both the time and the place suited what they had to do. In 1948 the shingle was still littered with concrete blocks and barbed wire, the vast river of herring was vanishing, the industrial enterprises of the Garrett brothers were failing and the local accommodation for Festival audiences verged on the severe. There is no more accurate account of those early days than Imogen Holst’s Diary.

And yet, what happened! The historic severity of this coast inspired a distinctive type of creativity which can now, via these vivid contributions, be seen not as a ‘school’ but as something which does not exist elsewhere. Thus this second Aldeburgh Anthology has the dual quality of being both an absorbing read and an important addition to our understanding of the arts – and music in particular – during the late twentieth century. They have thrived in a sharp climate. But then they always have, as anyone can see when they look up at the medieval oak and flint churches or into the stern couplets of George Crabbe. One of the most engaging things about these many writers, musicians, artists and photographers is the way in which Aldeburgh has ‘got them’. Although they show every kind of response to it, the little town and its surrounding countryside seem to hold them in its grip. Just as they did its genius-interpreter Benjamin Britten. I would meet him on the marshes in the cold afternoons, not very wrapped up, walking lightly, the wind tearing at him, the sea sullen and Aldeburgh itself white in the near distance. It was etiquette not to see him, to walk on. To be ‘working’, as he was working at that moment. Many of these contributors are in their various way working walkers in that unique territory.

To give the necessary balance to so many gifted incomers, the New Aldeburgh Anthology allows Suffolk to speak for itself and in all kinds of voices. Local historians and fishermen, natives and ‘foreigners’ all put their oar in, so to speak, adding to the vigour of the selection. Almost everything said and done is cinematic to some degree, the East Coast weather dominating music, writing, painting, sailing, thought. All this atmosphere blows through the book and is present even where it isn’t mentioned. It makes for clear statements. What should not astonish the reader, but which nevertheless does, is the variety of the contents. If nothing else, they remind the reader of the broad vision of ‘Aldeburgh’ from its early days to the present, and how it has always striven to include every talent.

The New Aldeburgh Anthology will be available from booksellers worldwide, not just in Suffolk, and a special limited edition may be purchased direct from the publisher.

Note on pronunciation: Aldeburgh is pronounced in a similar way to Edinburgh, so Ald’boro rather than Alder-burg.