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Melinda Bargreen\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 July 30, 2020<\/p>\n
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A \u201cvirtual festival\u201d also offers the chance to experience performances that would be impossible to achieve live \u2014 like Aaron Jay Kernis\u2019 \u201cSiren for Solo Flute, 7 Flutes and Piccolo.\u201d The incredibly nimble flutist Marina Piccinini played all the parts, recorded and captured simultaneously on the screen as if in a Zoom meeting. The intricacy of the interweaving musical lines, the wonderfully dexterous and subtle playing, and the sheer virtuosity of Piccinini\u2019s technique were all heightened by the clever manipulation of the images. This performance, premiered on Wednesday evening, must be seen and heard to be believed.<\/p>\n
And you can get to know new and challenging repertoire in a way not possible with one hearing. Wednesday\u2019s concert, recorded July 22, featured four works by Kernis (whose Violin Concerto \u2014 composed for and recorded by James Ehnes and the Seattle Symphony \u2014 won two 2019 Grammy Awards).<\/p>\n
Hearing Kernis talk about his \u201cMini Kernis Festival\u201d on Wednesday evening, with three world premieres among those four works on the program, was particularly illuminating and timely. His \u201cElegy (for those we lost),\u201d composed two months ago in memory of the victims of COVID-19 and premiered by pianist Alessio Bax, could not have been more \u201cin the moment\u201d with its quiet lyricism rising to an anguished crescendo and subsiding again in resignation. Kernis\u2019 \u201cUn Bacio,\u201d premiered with beautiful clarity by solo pianist Joyce Yang, proved an epic piece of substantial difficulty.<\/p>\n