This CD features two fascinating American clarinet concerts. Fascinating especially because these are two completely opposite worlds, despite the fact that both composers must be regarded as New Yorkers. Conductor Paul Meyer, for example, notes that Corigliano's music is actually more suited to the American west coast, California and Hollywood. Nevertheless, Corigliano 's activities mainly took
… place around New York. For example, he contributed to Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts for CBS. It was also Leonard Bernstein who premiered Corigliano's lavish symphonic Clarinet Concerto in 1977, the moving Elegy of which was an in memoriam to Corigliano's father, the violinist John Corigliano. Elliott Carter's world is much more distant and more European-oriented, towards Schönberg, Webern and Boulez. In Carter's concert, the clarinet is, as it were, played off against a highly divisive chamber orchestra, which produces a very transparent and sometimes almost Arcadian sound image. (HJ)more
