Elliot Carter, Jose-Luis Hurtado, and Yehudi Wyner at Harvard University

Elliott Carter who will turn 100 next year, has visited Boston for the premiere of his newest work, a horn concerto. The concerto was premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra on November 15 in a program that featured Haydn’s London Symphony and Mahler’s 1st Symphony.

After the premiere, Carter visited Harvard University were he received the Boston Symphony Orchestra Mark M. Horblit Award. The event featured a panel discussion with Carter and James Levine that was moderated by Anne Shreffler.

Shortly before the ceremony the doctoral students and faculty in the music department had a chance to meet Carter in a more private setting. I had met Carter for the first time in 2004 when he visited Harvard for a symposion in his honor. The impression he made on me last week was even greater. The minute he walked into the room he radiated a kind of energy that is hard to find in most New Music contexts. In the discussion, Carter spoke mostly about the “interesting problems” he had solve in his concertos. At first it was not clear to me what he meant by “interesting problems,” I thought he might have referred to compositional procedures or methods, but it soon became clear that he was talking about the “problem” to make the solo instrument sound good when playing together with the huge symphony orchestra. Carter was talking about how he wanted to make the soloist “have fun” while playing the music, challanging them but at the same giving them something that works really well for their instruments.

Maybe this is Carter’s secret, that he cares a lot about the performers who then go out an play his music. And of course he is right with this attitude, for if the performers do not have fun playing the piece, how should the audience enjoy the music?