A Thumbnail of Two Musical Neighborhoods

On Sequenza21, Steve Hicken reviews the Naxos CD+DVD commemorating Elliott Carter’s centenary. I had snapped up that Naxos release (a) because I expected to enjoy the music—and I do, (b) it’s cheap—face it, that’s how Naxos first got our attention, and largely how they manage to keep it, and (c) because both of the larger-scale soloist + ensemble pieces (Mosaic for solo harp and seven instruments, and Dialogues for piano and 18) have appeared on the ’09-’10 BSO season. I found myself less bothered by the amateurish video effects in Mosaic than were both Steve and Jay Batzner on Sequenza21. But I expect we should agree that A Labyrinth in Time is a more substantial and significant DVD document of the composer.

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And, because of the accident of timing (I finished reading through the book last night, and was listening earlier today to the third, fourth & fifth Canticles), this closing observation in a Phaidon trade paperback:

But the fear that much of his work would not long survive him has proved ill-founded. Since his death the idea that modernism, essentially descending from Schoenberg and his pupils, is the central musical language of our time, a language to which Britten’s music mad no contribution and is therefore irrelevant, has become less and less tenable.

—Benjamin Britten (p.212) by Michael Oliver