Elliott Carter: 100 years old, and still writing deliciously hummable tunes
Well, maybe that's not strictly accurate. Yes, the great American composer is 100, so far as I know he is still composing, but I heard five of his pieces at the Queen Elizabeth Hall last night and I...
View ArticleAldeburgh's opening weekend: a challenge for those of us who love it
It's common that publication of the Queen's Birthday honours list coincides with the opening weekend of the Aldeburgh festival, but that's as far as the connection normally goes. This year it went...
View ArticlePierre-Laurent Aimard is a stunning pianist, but the right man to run the...
I say this every year, but the truth of it doesn't diminish: of all the music festivals in all the corners of the world, the one I'd miss most seriously if by some unthinkable occurrence it closed down...
View ArticleA dazzling new work from Elliott Carter (b. 1908)
This afternoon I heard a new double concerto for piano and percussion whose mixture of mathematical complexity and bouncy joie de vivre took the breath away. Elliott Carter's Conversations was...
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