In celebration of Elliott Carter’s 97th birthday, Bridge Records is proud to be issuing Volume Six of its Elliott Carter Edition.  This series of recordings has garnered high critical praise including three Grammy nominations, BBC Music Magazine’s “Best of the Year”and the ASCAP Deems Taylor Prize.  Volume Six features violin virtuoso Rolf Schulte’s highly anticipated recording of Carter’s Violin Concerto, and listeners will surely be thrilled by his electrifying performance.  Schulte, in a spectacularly gripping account of Carter’s masterpiece,  gives us state-of-the-art violin playing, and British conductor Justin Brown leads the Odense Symphony Orchestra of Denmark in a reading that captures the detailed and panoramic emotional range of this score.  Schulte then steps into the spotlight with a superb account of Carter’s collection of violin solos- Four Lauds.  Rolf Schulte was the dedicatee of the final movement of this set, “Fantasy- Remembering Roger” (1999), and his performance here takes up where his Violin Concerto reading leaves off.   What ultimately makes Schulte’s readings of Carter’s music so exceptionally satisfying is his complete mastery of the technical aspects of this music. Schulte’s playing is so assured and deeply committed that he has the rare ability to transcend the music’s surface difficulties, and reveal its humanistic emotional core.  Volume Six concludes with a performance of Carter’s early Holiday Overture, a brassy and celebratory composition that heralded the end of World War II and led to the beginning of Carter’s mature style.  Notes by British musicologist Malcolm McDonald, and a number of rare photographs of the composer complete this disc.

Elliott Carter on Bridge:
BRIDGE 9014 - The Vocal Works
BRIDGE 9044 - Eight Works (1948-1993)
BRIDGE 9090 - Complete Piano works, Charles Rosen, piano
BRIDGE 9111 - The Music of Elliott Carter, Vol. 4
BRIDGE 9128 - The Music of Elliott Carter, Vol. 5