There is a 47-year time-span for the compositions on this hugely rewarding disc, and comparison of the earliest and most recent works underlines that, for Carter, there has been no turning back. While casting a few glances over its shoulder at the fast-disappearing world of neo-classicism, the Cello Sonata (1948) is well on the way to Carter’s own personal brand of modernism, and the Fifth String Quartet (1994-5) is a notably intense distillation of that arrestingly personal style.
The quartet is by some way the toughest item included, a lattice of eloquently shaped, persistently diverse fragments, whose moments of continuity are the more telling for their rarity. This is the kind of musical discourse in which silence can be as highly charged as sound, and there’s little of the kind of loquacious yet never incoherent exuberance that makes the Cello Sonata such a joy, and which is realized to admiration in this superbly characterized performance by Rohan de Saram and Ursula Oppens. An even more powerful shaping of dialogue in terms of a constantly shifting kaleidoscope of similarities and differences can be heard in the Duo for violin and piano (1973-4). Irvine Arditti and Ursula Oppens ensure that the music’s epic voyage grips as strongly as ever, and even though the dryish recording makes their reading sound almost superhumanly effortless, it is more appropriate in idiom than the rather romantic approach of Rolf Schulte and Martin Goldray on Bridge, recorded more closely, and at a high dynamic level.
With three of Carter’s typically resourceful late miniatures, rather clinically but very clearly recorded, and all played with outstanding sympathy and technical skill, this is an indispensable addition to the Carter discography.'