BBC - Symphony Orchestra - Carter Weekend

Saturday 14 January

10.30am Film, Cinema 2, Level 4
A Labyrinth of Time (*)
Dutch director Frank Scheffer's experimental documentary captures the essence of Carter's music, using New York as a bustling metaphor for the composer's fascination with the perception and transformation of time. Elliott Carter, Daniel Barenboim, Charles Rosen and Pierre Boulez are among Scheffer's interview subjects.
2004 Dir. Frank Scheffer 90 mins
(*) certificate to be confirmed

1.00pm Concert, Barbican Hall
London Sinfonietta

COLIN MATTHEWS Two Tributes
ELLIOTT CARTER Clarinet Concerto
ELLIOTT CARTER Double Concerto for harpsichord, piano and two chamber orchestras

London Sinfonietta
Oliver Knussen conductor
Michael Collins clarinet
Ian Brown piano
John Constable harpsichord

Carter wrote few orchestral pieces between his Holiday Overture in 1944 and the Double Concerto in 1961. During the intervening years he developed the Overture's use of 'multi-layering', in which different strands of musical activity overlap and contrast. The Double Concerto is a modernist masterpiece, packed with emotional force and incredible sonorities. Playfulness and surprises lie at the Clarinet Concerto's energetic heart.

4.00pm Concert, St Giles Cripplegate
String Quartets

ELLIOTT CARTER String Quartet No 5
BARTÓK String Quartet No 4
ELLIOTT CARTER String Quartet No 1

Arditti String Quartet

Dedicated to the Arditti String Quartet, Carter's Fifth Quartet of 1995, opened a fresh chapter in the composer's development. Here, the music has been stripped of excess without sacrificing Carter's concerns for the drama of complex feelings and ideas. Bartók's Fourth Quartet, meanwhile, represents the conclusion of a hugely productive phase in the Hungarian composer's work, fusing aspects of Expressionism and neo-Classicism. Carter observed that his First Quartet "was written largely for my own satisfaction and grew out of an effort to understand myself."

4.15pm Film, Cinema 3, Level 4
A Labyrinth of Time (*)
See 10.30am for full details.

6.45pm Talk, The Fountain Room, Level 0
An introduction to tonight's concert .
This event is only open to Weekend Pass-holders owing to the size of the venue.

7.15pm Freestage Event, Barbican Foyer
Symphony by Three Orchestras
As Orchestra in Association of the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham, the BBCSO regularly works with YOOHF (the Youth Orchestra of Hammersmith and Fulham) and the Fulham Symphony Orchestra. Come and see musicians from all three orchestras performing the premiere of a new work inspired by Elliott Carter's Symphony of Three Orchestras.
Free

8.00pm Concert, Barbican Hall
Variations

ELLIOTT CARTER Holiday Overture
IVES Decoration Day
IVES Fourth of July
ELLIOTT CARTER Of Rewaking
SESSIONS Rhapsody
ELLIOTT CARTER Variations for Orchestra

BBC Symphony Orchestra
David Robertson conductor
Jane Irwin mezzo-soprano

During the 1940s Carter increasingly turned to the distinctly American model of Charles Ives. Holiday Overture, written following the liberation of Paris in 1944, weaves its celebratory spell from subtle shifts in rhythm and syncopations. Unexpected changes and relationships of character, as unfolded by contemporary psychologists and novelists, inform Variations for Orchestra, a thrilling, innovative take on traditional variation form.

Get Carter! The Music of Elliott Carter