DSO to premiere flute concerto by Aaron Jay Kernis
Mark Stryker, January 20, 2016
This week the DSO gives the world premiere of Aaron Jay Kernis’ Concerto for Flute and Orchestra with soloist Marina Piccinini. Once a wunderkind, Kernis, now 56, comes to the DSO as one of the most celebrated composers of his generation, having won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998.
Though Kernis is best known for the unabashedly neo-romantic lyricism of his music, he works with an eclectic toolbox. His Second Symphony, inspired by the Persian Gulf War, swirls with massed dissonance, violence and consoling sadness. On the other hand, “100 Greatest Dance Hits” for guitar and string quartet is playful, pulsating with salsa, rock and disco rhythms. Other scores might channel Beethoven, minimalism or Renaissance and baroque forms. “He’s a fireball of energy,” said Slatkin. “And you never know what you’re going to get. He runs a true stylistic gamut.”
The large-scaled Flute Concerto is cast in four movements and makes virtuoso demands on the soloist and orchestra. Kernis said the piece balances darkness and light, and each movement starts with an older dance form before moving in other directions. The finale references flute techniques associated with Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull and the jazz flutist Rahsaan Roland Kirk.
Kernis, who teaches at Yale, spoke from his home in New York. His new concerto shares space on the program with the 1996 Trumpet Concerto by John Williams, the multiple Oscar-winning composer. As it happens, Kernis had just taken his son to see “Star Wars,” whose music was written by Williams. Unprompted, Kernis volunteered that the score was “fantastic.” That’s where the conversation started, before turning to today’s landscape and Kernis’ own artistic concerns.
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