BBC - Symphony Orchestra - Carter Weekend

Friday 13 January

4.30pm Film, Cinema 1, Level -2
Elliott Carter - Time is Music (*)
A rare screening of Frank Scheffer's revealing documentary Time Is Music, which surveys the work of Elliott Carter and fellow composer John Cage. Using interviews and extracts from performances, Scheffer takes us deep into the thoughts and creative impulses of two composers who shaped the direction of American music in the 20th century.
1988 Dir. Frank Scheffer, 50 min.
(*) certificate to be confirmed

6.00pm Talk, The Fountain Room, Level 0
Elliott Carter in conversation with writer and broadcaster Christopher Cook.
This event is only open to Weekend Pass-holders owing to the size of the venue.

7.30pm Concert, Barbican Hall
Piano Concerto
ELLIOTT CARTER Three Occasions
COPLAND Connotations
ELLIOTT CARTER Piano Concerto

BBC Symphony Orchestra
Oliver Knussen conductor
Nicolas Hodges piano

Carter's drive to explore soundscapes both exotic and previously unimagined strongly marks his compositions in this opening concert. The Piano Concerto, completed in 1965, follows in the musical footsteps of Charles Ives to create a strikingly rich blend of solo piano and 72 individual orchestral parts. Each of the Three Occasions reflects facets of Carter's artistic character, from the humour of A Celebration of Some 100 x 150 Notes and meditative quality of Remembrance to the contrapuntal clarity of Anniversary .

10.00pm Concert, St Giles Cripplegate
Carter and the Elizabethans
ELLIOTT CARTER Musicians Wrestle Everywhere
ELLIOTT CARTER Harvest Home
ELLIOTT CARTER Heart Not So Heavy
ELLIOTT CARTER Emblems
ELLIOTT CARTER To Music
Plus madrigals by BYRD , MORLEY and WEELKES

BBC Singers
Stephen Cleobury conductor
Iain Farrington piano

A concert combining Elliott Carter's own choral works with music by some of the Elizabethan madrigalists whose work he much admires. William Byrd, Thomas Weelkes and Thomas Morley were three of the most popular composers of the period and this concert includes settings, by each composer, of texts which explore many of the same ideas as those set by Carter nearly 400 years later - the rural life, the lovelorn, looking out at the world, and the power of music itself.

Get Carter! The Music of Elliott Carter