Carter, E: Night Fantasies (1980)

Celebrated pianist Håkon Austbø has received many international awards for his work in the area of contemporary music. ‘Wanted’ is his second solo recording for Aurora, and features major works by three great musical figures of the latter half of the 20th and start of the 21st centuries, Pierre Boulez, Elliott Carter, and Asbjørn Schaathun.

The third Piano Sonata represents a key moment in the development of Pierre Boulez’ music. In this piece which dates back to 1957, the composer for the first time takes fully on board the ideas of John Cage about principles of chance in music. Night Fantasies was also a turning point in Elliott Carter’s work. In this single movement piece Carter builds up the musical journey with contrasting episodes, whilst he himself makes the choice of route through the labyrinth. Asbjørn Schaathun’s “Physis” was crucial in the establishment of his musical style as he started to combine the stochastic approach of Xenakis with the serial procedures of Stockhausen. The seven “Areas” in the piece provide a fixed framework, each area consisting of a larger section, played without electronics, followed by smaller ones using electronics. The smaller sections are always interchangeable, with the performer choosing the order.

Norwegian pianist Håkon Austbø is internationally known for his work in contemporary music. Having lived and worked out of the Netherlands for more than 30 years, Austbø has recently returned to his home country. His numerous recordings, among them the complete piano works of Messiaen, have received many awards. His previous recording for Aurora featured the music of Valen, Egge, Mortenssen, and Wallin (ACD5060).

Cedille Records celebrates composer Elliott Carter's 100th birthday (December 11) with Oppens Plays Carter, the only complete CD survey of Carter's solo piano works, including two world premieres, performed by one of his leading interpreters - American pianist Ursula Oppens.

The disc brings together the composer whom Aaron Copland called "one of America's most distinguished creative artists in any field" with a pianist "known particularly for the intelligence, technical skill and warmth she brings to...contemporary music." (Grove Music)

The disc features Carter's pivotal Piano Sonata (1945-46), the breakthrough work in which Carter found his voice and projected the scope of his talent, and his transcendental Night Fantasies (1980), written for a group of four pianists including Ms. Oppens, who gave the premiere. Seven shorter pieces written between 1994 and 2007 complete the disc, which concludes with the world premiere recording of Carter's virtuosic Catenaires (2006), a harmonically compelling, fiendishly difficult, toccata-like succession of rapid-fire 16th notes.

Oppens Plays Carter is the perfect tribute to the "Dean" of American composers by the pianist most closely associated with his music.

Composer Elliott Carter can truly claim the title of living legend. The two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, mentored as a youth by Charles Ives, is not only being honoured in the United States and Europe with centenary concerts of his work, but he has actually been able to make brief but triumphal appearances at some of these celebrations. The New York Times reported that, during a five-day Carter festival in July at Tanglewood, organized by conductor and longtime Carter champion James Levine, audiences were ‘shouting as if they were at a rock concert when Mr. Carter took his curtain calls’ - a particularly impressive response given that Carter has long been considered a purveyor of “difficult music”. The centenary events culminated on December 11 at Carnegie Hall, on the evening of Carter’s 100th birthday, with a premiere of a new piece, to be performed by the Boston Symphony.

This four-disc retrospective documents some of Carter’s most essential works, recorded for Nonesuch between 1968 and 1985. As liner note writer Paul Griffiths explains, Nonesuch, then helmed by creative director Teresa Sterne, ‘played a conspicuous role in carrying his music to a wide audience… bringing him the acclaim that encouraged him to go on, with undiminished vigor, into a ‘late period’ that has lasted more than thirty years. Nonesuch was not only the first label to give Carter’s music international distribution and continuing support, it also placed his work in an appropriate context of discovery and adventure.’

Carter, who the New Yorker’s Alex Ross has called ‘a giant of American Modernism’, has said he considered ‘change, process, evolution as music’s prime factor.’ Time was a constant obsession; he experimented boldly with tempo and often looked beyond traditional Western sources for inspiration. This compilation includes convention-defying, breakthrough pieces like Carter’s Cello Sonata and String Quartet No. 1, ‘a large experiment in polyrhythms of all kinds’, Carter has said, which he wrote while spending a soul searching year in Arizona’s Sonora Desert. Carter demanded as much from the intrepid listeners who embraced his rhythmically and theoretically complex work as from the musicians who played it. He was often a polarizing figure, who provoked and confounded as many as he influenced and encouraged. But, as the Los Angeles Times recently noted, there was always something deeper to be found below the daunting, analytical surface: ‘Carter's music is mathematically impressive. He works with massive numbers of sketches and charts and graphs. But …the core of the music is dramatic. Each piece has a poetic soul.’

‘One of America's most distinguished creative artists in any field.’ Aaron Copland

‘As we salute Carter, we are hailing a composer who has always been his own man, and whose music is some of the most remarkable and enduring of our time.’ Guardian

An immensely satisfying traversal of modern piano music as performed by arguably the greatest contemporary exponent of the repertoire.