Classical Music | Cello Music

Elliott Carter

Elegy for Cello and Piano  Play

Jay Campbell Cello
Conor Hanick Piano

Recorded on 02/10/2016, uploaded on 08/30/2016

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

The Elegy is an early work (Carter was only 31 when he wrote it), and it exists in a number of forms. Carter did not specify that the Elegy had been written to commemorate a specific person or event, but it is suffused with an appropriately subdued and elegiac air. At the opening, marked Adagio sostenuto, the melodic line rises and falls over long contoured arcs. Though the fundamental opening tempo remains the same throughout, the music seems to gather energy and presses ahead to climax, then subsides to a calm close, slowly fading into silence. This concert offers the Elegy in Carter’s revised version for cello and piano.      Jay Campbell