Elliott Carter drove on through all the ‘Stop’ signs put up by age. In his mid-sixties, after two decades devoted to just half a dozen big chamber and orchestral scores, he began writing songs. In his midseventies, when he seemed to be winding down with pieces for smaller formations, he starting producing orchestral works again. He composed his Oboe Concerto for concerts to mark his eightieth birthday, and still there was more, including his Symphonia for orchestra, a work in three parts, of which the first were Partita (1993) and Adagio tenebroso (1995).

Oboe Concerto

On Monday evening, during a pause in a procession of Messiaen events, it was time for the South Bank to salute Elliott Carter, a man born the day after Messiaen but in so many respects musically his antithesis: secular, continuously progressive, contrapuntal, atonal, unrepeating, constantly on the alert for change. Where Messiaen's latest pieces belong to a musical personality that had been formed in its essentials by 1930, Carter's exist in a world then unimaginable, and his astonishing late creative energy was proved at this Queen Elizabeth Hall celebration in performances of three big, unceasing works written within the last four years: his Fourth Quartet, Penthode for five mixed quartets, and the Oboe Concerto that had its first performance in Zurich six months ago.