- Elliott Carter
Night Fantasies (1980)
- Associated Music Publishers Inc (World)
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
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
- LabelNew Focus
- Catalogue Number159
- SoloistEric Huebner
- Released14th April 2014
Elliott Carter - A Nonesuch Restrospective

- LabelNonesuch
- Catalogue Number510893
- EnsembleNew York Chamber Symphony / Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra
- Released24th February 2009
Elliott Carter
- LabelBridge
- Catalogue Number9001
- SoloistAleck Karis
- Released11th September 1993

- LabelMusic & Arts Programs of America
- Catalogue Number4862
- SoloistUrsula Oppens (Piano)

- LabelNeuma
- Catalogue Number76
- SoloistStephen Drury (Piano)

- LabelL'empreinte Digitale
- Catalogue Number13164
- SoloistWinston Choi (Piano)

- LabelBridge
- Catalogue Number9090
- SoloistCharles Rosen (Piano)

- LabelWarner Classics International
- Catalogue Number62160
- SoloistPierre-Laurent Aimard (Piano)
Complete Piano Music
- LabelCedille
- Catalogue NumberCDR90000 108
- SoloistUrsula Oppens, piano
Wanted
- LabelGrappa
- Catalogue NumberACD 5071
- SoloistHåkon Austbø (piano)