KERNIS: Simple Songs; Valentines; Two Songs: Love and Spirit
Talise Trevigne, s; Aaron Jay Kernis, p; Albany
Symphony/ David Alan Miller
Albany 1690—56 minutes
Aaron Jay Kernis’s Simple Songs is given in an arrangement with orchestra. Texts deal with human access to spirituality (Hildegard
von Bingen, Ryokan, Runi, and Psalms 1 and 131, the latter for Bernstein, with an appropriate Mahlerian touch. Kernis’s romantic settings,
of the Psalms in particular, are gorgeous and sublimely moving.
Valentines is dedicated to his teacher at Yale, Jacob Druckman. Texts are by Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy. These settings
are written in a style similar to his mentor’s academic modernism, with his often somewhat romantic shadings, buttery angularity
and spooky lyricism, occasional violence, eroticism, and loneliness. One of the numbers is what amounts to an operatic scene, about
breaking up and leaving. It is effective in its way. Two Songs: Love and Spirit, with texts by contemporary poet Alexandra Villard de Borchgrave, deal with hope and spirit following 9/11. These are expressive in Kernis’s most intimate vein. The composer accompanies.
Mr Kernis is among our most accomplished lyricists, and his music is always worth your time. Texts, notes by the composer.
GIMBEL