Boston: Elliott Carter's ‘Micomicón’

Abstract

Next season James Levine ceases to be Music Director Designate of the Boston Symphony, and becomes the orchestra's Music Director and Conductor. Due to previous commitments, Levine has conducted only one program in each of the three seasons since he was named to the post. Celebration of his ascendency to the directorship of the orchestra has already begun, though, with the commissioning of works from a number of composers, including Milton Babbitt, John Harbison, and Yehudi Wyner, for his first season, restoring one of the proudest traditions of the BSO – that of the music director's active and enthusiastic promotion of contemporary orchestral compositions. It is not insignificant that this first season of the directorship of this American orchestra by an American conductor features American composers at a time when classical concert music seems to be about the only area of American life resistant to overt jingoism. Levine's earliest plans for the season included performing Elliott Carter's Symphonia: Sum fluxae pretium spei, and, hoping to link the occasion and the BSO to the triptych, he commissioned from Carter a short introductory fantasy to that work, entitled Micomicón. This pendant received its première, preceding a performance of Partita, the first part of the Symphonia triptych, at Symphony Hall in January.