There is a line of thought, at least in his own country, that Elliott Carter's music has gone through a tidal change in the last ten years; that he had finally given up on his crusade to demand Olympian feats of mental and aural skill to enjoy his music, that he had begun to give way – if only a little – to the trend toward simplicity that started with the neo-tonality of the late 1970s and the neo-Romanticism of the 1980s. In essence, that his music had finally become expressive in the traditional sense. Yet there has been no such sea change; instead we have witnessed the careful, focussed growth of the imagination and intellect of a musical giant.