in: Reviews
April 19, 2018
Don’t Let This Contingent Graduate
by Lee Eiseman
The concert opened with the world premiere of a co-commission (with the Nashville Symphony) celebrating New England Conservatory’s 150th anniversary. Not content with merely a festive overture, Aaron Jay Kernis delivered a massive, honest-to-goodness symphony “containing the entire world.” Chromelodeon, his Number 4, made a tremendous impression. The composer did not stint in any way, not in size of orchestra, complexity of meaning, or generosity of expression. “Out of Silence” opens as tuned percussion evoke a musical dawn of creation. The viola choir mournfully searches, the winds ponder before a martial tutti erupts. Wrathful trombones give way to a return to a quiet veiled odyssey. Ingenious, almost contrapuntal interludes unfold as Germanic sentences, verbs at the end. One thought of Thomas Mann. Lively ideas morph quickly, but with enough familiarity to ground us. Another big crescendo, and then a pianissimo close with solo piccolo.
Could Kernis have asked for a more expert premiere of his emphatic Fourth? No, he told BMInt, he could not have imagined a more propitious birth. The composer’s comfort in the term “symphony” is justified by his large and confident addition to the genre. This one looks to have long and shapely gams.
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