Composer: Elliott Carter
Carter - Figment
from FigmentThe idea of composing a solo cello piece had been in the back of my mind for many years, especially since so many cellists had been urging me to do so. When Thomas Demenga asked me for such a work, at my 1994 85th birthday concert in Basel, to be premiered at a concert lie was giving in New York City sponsored by the Naumburg Foundation, I promptly set to work Demenga had already impressed me greatly, when lie played some of my chamber works at my 80th birthday concert in Badenweiler Germany and especially by his wonderful recording of these works issued under the ECM RECORDS New Series.
"Figment" for solo cello presents a variety of contrasting, dramatic moments using material derived from a single musical idea.
Elliott Carter (1994)
BIO
Twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, first composer to receive the United States National Medal of Arts, one of the few composers ever awarded Germany's Ernst Von Siemens Music Prize, and in 1988 made "Commandeur dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres" by the Government of France, Elliott Carter is internationally recognized as one of the leading American voices of the classical music tradition. He recently received the Prince Pierre Foundation Music Award, bestowed by the Principality of Monaco, and is one of only a handful of living composers elected to the Classical Music Hall of Fame.
First encouraged toward a musical career by his friend and mentor Charles Ives, Carter was recognized by the Pulitzer Prize Committee for the first time in 1960 for his groundbreaking String Quartet No. 2. Stravinsky hailed Carter's Double Concerto for harpsichord, piano, and two chamber orchestras (1961) and Piano Concerto (1967), as "masterpieces." While he spent much of the 1960s working on just two works, the Piano Concerto and Concerto for Orchestra (1969), the breakthroughs he achieved in those pieces led to an artistic resurgence that gathered momentum in the decades that followed. Indeed, one of the extraordinary features of Carter's career is his astonishing productivity and creative vitality as he embarks on his eleventh decade.
Of his creative output exceeding 130 works, Carter composed more than 40 pieces in the past decade alone. This astonishing late-career creative burst has resulted in a number of brief solo and chamber works, as well as major essays such as Asko Concerto (2000) for Holland's ASKO Ensemble. Some chamber works include the playfully humorous Mosaic (2004), Two Thoughts About the Piano (2005-06), now widely toured by Pierre-Laurent Aimard, and In the Distances of Sleep (2006), for mezzo soprano and ensemble. Carter continues to show his mastery in larger forms as well, with major contributions such as What Next? (1998), a witty first opera premiered in both Berlin and New York City, Boston Concerto (2002), Three Illusions for Orchestra (2004), called by the Boston Globe "surprising, inevitable, and vividly orchestrated," Horn Concerto (2006), and a piano concerto, Interventions (2008), which premiered on Carter's 100th birthday concert at Carnegie Hall with James Levine, Daniel Barenboim, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (December 11, 2008).
Carter's centenary celebrations continue this season with more than 600 performances of his works scheduled around the globe.
Elliott Carter is published by Boosey & Hawkes.
