"Boston" Concerto for Orchestra - Elliott Carter

BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Oliver Knussen.

I - Allegro staccatissimo (0:00) - Lento, teneramente (1:18) - Tempo primo (3:13) - Meno mosso (4:00) - Più Mosso, tempo primo (5:26) - Meno mosso (6:20) - Tempo primo (7:49) - Lento, sostenuto (8:58) - Tempo primo (10:46) - Più mosso (11:48) - Tempo primo (13:03) - Maestoso (14:11) - Tempo primo (16:05)

Carter's Boston Concerto was composed in 2002, being commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, for which the piece is titled. It was premiered on April 3 of 2003, performed by said orchestra conducted by Ingo Metzmacher. Carter dedicated the concerto to his wife Helen Jones Carter, who died on May 17 of 2003. The piece is divided in thirteen connected movements performed continously.

Coming so soon after the Symphonia (and from a composer now in his nineties) this was an extraordinary flourish of orchestral rejuvenation. The pattern is similar to that of the smaller ASKO Concerto: music of one kind, often using rather full resources, is interleaved with episodes of different sorts for different ensembles. Among the latter are inventions for flutes plus clarinets and for single reeds, a slowly revolving brass object and a passionate strain from strings. The abiding spirit, however, is that of the rapid, shimmering main music: rain music, recalling a poem by William Carlos Williams in which love is seen, like showers, to “bathe every open object of the world.”

Picture: "Portrait of Two Women" (1914) by the Mexican painter Diego Rivera.

Source: https://bit.ly/3CWVESS

Unfortunately the score is not available.