Wednesday (6/6) on Bloomberg.com, James Tarmy writes, “Sitting in his Greenwich Village living room, Elliott Carter sips iced tea and looks pretty chipper for 103. Over the decades, Carter’s tough music has found an audience while his cheerful longevity has inspired admiration and affection as well. This Friday Carter will attend the world premiere of his ‘Two Controversies and a Conversation’ at the New York Philharmonic (which co-commissioned the piece with the Aldeburgh Festival and Radio France). Wearing a button-down shirt, suspenders and khakis, Carter reminisced about his life.” Carter recalls taking Stravinsky and his wife to the now-closed restaurant La Cote Basque. “We got a table in the middle of the room, speaking French, and a man came in, and said in rather good French, ‘will the maestro please give me an autograph?’ Stravinsky said ‘Certainly not.’ His wife did a great deal of talking in Russian and finally he agreed, but took forever to write out his name. The man waited and waited and by this point the whole room was watching. Finally Stravinsky was done and the man thanked him and walked away. We asked Stravinsky if he knew who he was and he said, ‘Certainly, I see him on television all the time.’ The man was Frank Sinatra.”
Posted June 7, 2012
