• Elliott Carter
  • Night Fantasies (1980)

  • Associated Music Publishers Inc (World)
  • pf
  • 24 min

Programme Note

Night Fantasies is a piano piece of continuously changing moods, suggesting the fleeting thoughts and feelings that pass through the mind during a period of wakefulness at night. The quiet, nocturnal evocation with which it begins and to which it returns occasionally, is suddenly broken by a flighty series of short phrases that emerge and disappear. This episode is followed by many others of contrasting characters and lengths that sometimes break in abruptly and at other, develop smoothly out of what has gone before. The work culminates in a loud periodic repetition of an emphatic chord that, as it dies away, brings the work to its conclusion.

In this score, I wanted to capture the fanciful, changeable quality of our inner life at a time when it is not dominated by strong, directive intentions or desires – to capture the poetic moodiness that, in an earlier romantic context, we employ in the works of Robert Schumann like Kreisleriana, Carnaval, and Davids-bundlertanze.

--Elliott Carter

Media

Discography

Carter: Night Fantasies

Carter: Night Fantasies
  • Label
    New Focus
  • Catalogue Number
    159
  • Soloist
    Eric Huebner
  • Released
    14th April 2014

Elliott Carter - A Nonesuch Restrospective

Elliott Carter - A Nonesuch Restrospective
  • Label
    Nonesuch
  • Catalogue Number
    510893
  • Ensemble
    New York Chamber Symphony / Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra
  • Released
    24th February 2009

Elliott Carter

Elliott Carter
  • Label
    Bridge
  • Catalogue Number
    9001
  • Soloist
    Aleck Karis
  • Released
    11th September 1993
Title Unavailable
  • Label
    Music & Arts Programs of America
  • Catalogue Number
    4862
  • Soloist
    Ursula Oppens (Piano)
Title Unavailable
  • Label
    Neuma
  • Catalogue Number
    76
  • Soloist
    Stephen Drury (Piano)
Title Unavailable
  • Label
    L'empreinte Digitale
  • Catalogue Number
    13164
  • Soloist
    Winston Choi (Piano)
Title Unavailable
  • Label
    Bridge
  • Catalogue Number
    9090
  • Soloist
    Charles Rosen (Piano)
Title Unavailable
  • Label
    Warner Classics International
  • Catalogue Number
    62160
  • Soloist
    Pierre-Laurent Aimard (Piano)

Complete Piano Music

Complete Piano Music
  • Label
    Cedille
  • Catalogue Number
    CDR90000 108
  • Soloist
    Ursula Oppens, piano

Wanted

Wanted
  • Label
    Grappa
  • Catalogue Number
    ACD 5071
  • Soloist
    Håkon Austbø (piano)