What's Next? (1997). Elliott Carter

I'll admit to having a phobia about new Elliott Carter works.  While some of them prove to be worthy, it takes considerable effort to assimilate the music.  This places Carter on the Cecil Taylor/Anthony Braxton end of the art/entertainment spectrum.  In the case of What's Next?, I have seen the CD but haven't yet had the courage to take it on.  Even after reading a review on Bagatallen and his comments on assessing the performance, I'm doubtful:

In discussing the performance of a work as obviously difficult as What Next? I want to stress that I have not seen the score, and, even if I had one handy, would need to take a tremendous amount of time and trouble before I could comfortably make any assertions regarding accuracy. Anyone can hear, however, the beauty of tone of both singers and instrumentalists as well as the apparent effortlessness of the production.

And yet, Bagatallen on the composer: 

Carter has always been an intellectual’s intellectual, ever refining his page-long algorithms, consistently offering layer upon layer of meaning for those interested in diving deep. Even so, he has never sacrificed the beautiful to the lesser divinities of the intricate or the cerebral. His priorities have invariably been flawless. As a result, Elliott Carter of the most prolific creators of profoundly beautiful art—not only of our time, but of any time.

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Update: Forgot the "?" in the title.  I blame it all on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

Comments

[Blip]

Too much has been made of Carter's complexity, I think. An analysis can help one appraciate the thought that went into the music -- as it can with Beethoven -- but of course is no substitute for the music itself. After a while, I find the best way to approach Carter is just to lay the books aside and listen, and then listen again. Bagatallen gets it right in saying Carter has never saccrificed the beautiful to the cerebral, but even he falls into the trap of focusing on the intellectualism and the "algorithms." (All music relies on algorithms. In tonal music of the common practice period, the choice of one chord limits the selection of chords that may follow. This is known as voice leading.) But you know all this stuff.

What Next? contains some lovely vocal counterpoint and pretty instrumental writing -- esp the English horn interlude. The story helps to keep things focused, too, although whenever I've read adverse criticism of the work, Griffith's libretto has been the cause of it. For me, the highlight of the disk is the lively little ASKO Concerto, a short, ebullient chamber symphony. That alone is worth the price of the disk.

You might want to look into a couple of other accessible, lovely and shorter pieces among Carter's recent output. I liked the Oboe Quartet and he Quintet for Piano and String Quartet the first time I heard them, and I haven't tired of them since. Both have been recorded.

[aworks]

Thanks for the suggestions, both in "how to" and "what to."

I will say that Carter's Night Fantasies is the work of his I favor most. I liked something about it immediately and then deepened my response by listening repeatedly.