From Amazon.co.uk
What a disc! Buy it first and foremost for the
Concerto for Orchestra, one of a handful of pieces that makes you realise just what the orchestra can do in the second half of the century. The opening explodes into focus; from then on it is 23 minutes of spectacular orchestral activity--with so much happening at any one time, this is musical relativity taken to its limits. That Carter shapes and directs his white-hot material with such precision and expressive purpose makes for a compulsive experience. Conductor Knussen finds the balance between homing-in on detail and relaying the broader picture: it's more confident and better-played than Leonard Bernstein's pioneering New York account (Sony Classical) and conveys the music's soundworld more completely than Michael Gielen's well-prepared German radio performance (temptingly cheap on Arte Nova). The Violin Concerto, sparser but not simpler and never "easy listening", is music of wisdom and reflection. Take your time, but go ahead and enjoy the
Three Occasions, a triptych of tributes that fuses the wit of Copland with the exuberance of Ives. Complex yet compulsive--Carter's music in a nutshell, and all the more wonderful for it!
--Richard Whitehouse
