ELLIOTT CARTER 103rd BIRTHDAY CONCERT, DECEMBER 8, 2011, 92nd Street Y, New York City
FRED SHERRY, Artistic Director & Cello
4 WORLD PREMIERES and 3 U.S. PREMIERES
Photo by Richard Termine for The New York Times
To see the New York Times review click here
We music lovers go to many performances with a pretty clear idea of what to expect. Yet looking back at the year’s musical highlights I am struck by how many took me by surprise. Perhaps it should not be a surprise at this point, but at 103 the composer Elliott Carter just keeps working. A recent concert at the 92nd Street Y, with a top-notch roster of musicians under the artistic direction of the cellist Fred Sherry, played an Elliott Carter birthday tribute program that included five engrossing and ingenious scores that Mr. Carter wrote this year, as well as a major work for tenor and chamber orchestra from 2010 in its premiere performance. The bright-eyed composer was there to bask in the ovation. –The New York Times, Dec, 18, 2011
On December 8, friends of Elliott Carter arranged for a concert at the 92nd St. Y in honor of his 103d birthday, which arrived three days later. All of the works were written in recent years, nine of them since Carter reached his century mark. The evening began with the most promising sign, a performance of a Duettino for violin and cello played by two well-known and superb performers, Rolf Schulte and Fred Sherry, who have played Carter for many decades, and continued with a new piece for solo violin. – Charles Rosen, The New York Review of Books, Feb. 9, 2012
