Paul Hughes

In 2006, the BBC Symphony Orchestra presented “Get Carter” – a major three day focus on the music of Elliott Carter. This project had been a while in the planning and was greatly enhanced by the presence of Elliott at virtually every concert and talk, charming the audiences with his wit and eloquence and the luminous brilliance of his music. Over the course of planning and performing this project, and in the years following, I was privileged to enjoy Elliott’s friendship, to bask in his sparkling wit and his views on the music business, always delivered with a twinkle in his eye – sometimes over dinner or tea when I knew he had a particular penchant for fancy cakes, enjoying the banter between he and Virgil. A series of short, filmed interviews were shown at the concert that Olly Knussen and the BBCSO presented for Elliott’s 100th birthday, and there the music was alive and vibrant as the man himself. I knew Elliott for barely one tenth of his life and wouldn’t have missed a moment of it for anything.