Album review: Aaron Jay Kernis, ‘Three Flavors’

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

The music of Aaron Jay Kernis covers a wide expressive range, from the dramatic and monumental to a more intimate demeanor. But the music on this new and irresistible disc headlined by pianist Andrew Russo concentrates on sheer ingratiating beauty; good luck turning the music off after you get even a taste of what’s included here. The main offering, “Three Flavors,” is a charmingly varied piano concerto, with Russo handling the virtuoso solo part and David Alan Miller leading the Albany Symphony Orchestra. It’s based on a piece that Kernis wrote for the toy-piano virtuoso Margaret Leng Tan, and that lineage is most obvious in the first movement, which jangles and whirs like a wonderful mechanical plaything. Then there’s a slow movement of practically unbearable beauty, steeped in the harmonies of the French Impressionists, and a jazzy finale to cap things off. Jazz runs through the rest of the disc as well, in “Two Movements (With Bells),” a duo with Russo and violinist James Ehnes, and “Superstar Etude” No. 3, Kernis’ tribute to Gershwin. All of it is buoyant and alluring, with an elegiac strain running through. — Joshua Kosman