This was one of his earlier Neo-Classical works, composed before he delved into his mature style with complex tonalities and rhythms with his first String Quartet. This sonata is one of the greatest American piano sonatas of the 20th century, IMHO.
Great piece. It splits the later Carter (which can be seen in the spikey rhythms) with early Carter ( where there is a sense of tonality C, B often overlapping). Within a couple of years he evolved into his polyrhythmic atonality and never looked back.
This Sonata shares some similarities with Barber's own Sonata written a few years after this. Although I like Barber's more generally, early Carter's style is interesting
The early music of most composers is often fresh and glorious because they are young, idealistic, and not particularly sophisticated yet. This is a very nice piece of music from Carter. He was 37 or so when he wrote it, and that is still fairly young.
@@DannyintheSpirit You mean not yet jaded, don’t you? Thirty-seven may have been fairly young for Carter, who was a month from turning one hundred and four when he died and still composing past the age of one hundred, but for the vast majority of composers of repute, nearly all of whom began in childhood, this is a mature age.
@@jeffryphillipsburns Good point. 37 is not young, but still youthful, and yes also an age when artists are fairly mature. I mean when artists are in their early to late 20s. I know this as a painter because when I was in my 20s I was so dreamy. But I also understand this as a lover of art who likes to trace the development of artists from their early days until their passing. It is just human nature. Most of us are crazily ambitious when we are young, and we sort of mellow out as we age. Nothing wrong with that. However, it is not written in stone. I am 55, I still paint, and I am teaching myself to cook and play the guitar (I literally just got one yesterday). God bless the arts and artists everywhere!
@@DannyintheSpirit Milan Kundera derisively calls youth (by which he means something like teens to early twenties) "the lyrical age". He wanted that to be the title of his second novel "Life is Elsewhere", a merciless and amusing lampooning of a young poet, but his publisher intervened.
@@DannyintheSpirit Thirty-seven time two is seventy-four, so it seems fair to me to call it middle-aged. Mozart and Schubert didn't even live to thirty-seven, and Mendelsohn died at age thirty-eight.
solo Carl Vine, peraltro ispirandosi proprio a questa sonata, è riuscito con la sua Sonata n.1 a darci una maggiore libertà, il secondo tempo che è quasi una fuga è epico, ma ovviamente anche questo pezzo è incredibile
Since the meter is constantly changing, the composer does not actually indicate what those meters are, but leaves it to the performer to discern them based on reading the musical material. This method of leaving out the written meters in music that shifts meter consistently is a common technique of 20th and 21st century music, particularly post-World War II.
@@dzordzszs yeah, no. Quintessential early EC. Like his Symphony 1 easily dismissed as pre "real EC." Always love this piece. Kinda cool to hear the numerous and proliferating versions as more and more performers opt to tackle this modern piano sonata. Vine acknowledges a debt to this piece. Miss Oppens delivers a vastly different interpretation here than the few others i have heard. While I am definitely not a listener with the credentials to compare different performers, I know enough about Oppens to know that she more than any other pianist has embraced, championed and performed many of his works involving piano. there is a technical prowess evinced here, an almost childlike virtuosity, sheer speed and a frolicking almost rambunctiousness that pervades the entire work. She breaks it up into perhaps hundreds and hundreds of phrases, shards, giving nuanced twists to nearly every phrase. I like it!!! Some of the passages are set off in such stark relief it sounds like a baroque mosaic of gliterring shards all interesting and unusual in themselves and also quite lovely when embroidered. I am not usually given to such quaint, Edwardian, almost moral undertones in my writing. For those who have read to this point, EC is in my opinion one of the greatest composers in the world - nothing short of Beethoven and Bach, Mozart et al. String Quartet #1, the Piano Concerto, Variations for Orchestra, Concerto for Orchestra, only to name the obvious ones are amongst the greatest achievements in all of the tradition of Western music. Will they ever achieve the notoriety of say vivaldi Four Seasons, Beethovens 5th, Pachelbel or even Holst's Planets - probably not but that has nothing to do with the music. Will his music ever disappear. NO! Too many people if only a few thousands of us recognize the staggering genius and his legacy will live on if not directly then through the achievements of others whose debt to EC will be revealed even though his debtors may be poets, bankers, scientists, writers, and more than a few from the world of music. For example and i almost cringe to end it here, Frank Zappa!
