Elliott Carter: Changes
The presentation will discuss Elliot Carter's complex compositional strategies and possible analytical methods of his music. Carter’s sketches for the 1983 solo guitar piece ‘Changes’, which marks the beginning of a series of shorter-scaled instrumental solo works, give us an intimate insight into his compositional habits. Through these sketches, his idiosyncratic use of predetermined hexachords, their implication on the guitar and his habitual precalculus of musical time and organisation of rhythm will be presented. The analysis of Carter’s sketches sheds light on how the piece was composed technically. In the second half of the presentation, the focus will be on analysing the unconscious perception of Carter’s music. Since the second half of the 20th century, more and more music theorists have become involved in how we listen to and experience music on a conscious and subconscious level. In the literature, the keyword was, in many cases, ‘Unity’—unity of thematic, motivic, harmonic material, and unity in the architectonical designs of musical forms. We perceive the ‘unity’ or the directive of a piece more often subconsciously. Thinking through a musical performance about music, as performance is in itself a source of musical meaning, gave me the idea to analyse Carter’s Changes through similar and also somewhat contrasting works by Krenek, Haubenstock-Ramati and Kurtág, highlighting Carter’s ambiguity and resistance to the concept of total serialisation, the polyvocality of contrasting personalities and characters presented in inner monologues in his pieces, the heterogeneity of gestures and the underlying, unifying background rhythmic and harmonic structure. The performed sequence of pieces shall demonstrate an analysis without words, presented only through the music, where the decisions of interpretation, even like the length of the silences between pieces, have an immediate effect on the analysis, creating a single, enclosed flow of thoughts on the various aspects of Carter’s music.
Zsombor Sidoo
Guitar
The Hungarian classical guitarist Zsombor Sidoo is one of the most promising performers of his generation. Born in 1997, he received his early musical influences from József Eötvös at the Franz Liszt Academy for Music in Budapest. Since 2013, he has been studying with Paolo Pegoraro at the University for Music and Performing Arts, Graz, and in 2021, he completed a master’s degree with the highest honours. He has been studying composition with the Swiss-born Austrian composer and conductor Beat Furrer and often premières new works, including some of his own compositions. Since 2022, he has been a doctoral candidate at the Doctoral School for Artistic Research in Graz. He is a prizewinner of numerous international competitions such as the International Instrumental Competition Markneukirchen, Concorso Pittaluga, Zagreb Guitar Festival and Mercatali Guitar Prize. Despite his young age, Zsombor Sidoo regularly gives concerts at prestigious venues such as the Ehrbarsaal in Vienna, Konzerthaus Klagenfurt, Musikhalle Markneukirchen, Fricsay Hall in Szeged, Vatroslav Lisinskij Hall in Zagreb and Verrucano in Mels. In the past few years, he has been invited to perform as well as to give masterclasses at several Festivals (Postojna, Rome, Pordenone, Szeged, Vienna, Oberhausen, Jüchen, Poznan, Uppsala, Paris, Turin, Grado et al.). He presents a carefully selected program at his concerts, including great masterpieces from different eras. Zsombor Sidoo’s debut CD with three sonatas by J.S. Bach, Manuel María Ponce, and Hans Werner Henze was released in October 2019.