brand-new violin concerto<\/a> written for him by one of today\u2019s finest composers, Aaron Jay Kernis. This was the U.S. premiere; last week Ehnes gave\u00a0the world premiere in Toronto (a co-commissioner with SSO).<\/p>\nTalk about making a great first impression! Despite \u2014 or even because of \u2014 its terrorizing challenges for the soloist, this is a concerto built to last: it\u2019s so good and makes such an obviously satisfying\u00a0contribution that I\u2019d bet at least some of the\u00a0more interesting virtuosos at work today will be intrigued to take it on.<\/p>\n
I sometimes wonder whether we\u2019ve been going through something of a concerto overload in recent years: too many composers relying on the supposedly built-in attractions of a structure that can feature a star protagonist while also benefiting from the color and horsepower of an orchestra (even if the latter is used merely for\u00a0\u201catmospheric\u201d\u00a0painting rather than in a richer, symphonic way).<\/p>\n
One of the many things that impress me about this new piece is that Kernis has really thought through the concerto idea and created something substantial and fresh without relying on esoteric novelties \u2014 without trying to reinvent the wheel.<\/p>\n
In fact, an attempt at abstract description of the piece might make it sound almost old-fashioned, but it\u2019s not. Like Brahms writing for Joseph Joachim (though Kernis himself studied violin as a youngster), he\u00a0resorts (distantly) to Baroque forms in the outer movements \u2014 an intensely felt and gripping Chaconne for the first and a \u201cToccatini\u201d (his play on the toccata) for the finale \u2014 with a soulful \u201cBallad\u201d doing service as the aria at the center. And the profusion of little cadenza-islands amid the orchestral archipelago also\u00a0underscores the concerto\u2019s conventional identification with virtuoso prowess.<\/p>\n
But Kernis animates\u00a0all of these conventional elements with a marvelously contemporary spirit. The first two movements\u00a0have deep emotional resonance, while the\u00a0finale is so infectiously zippy (and outrageously hard to play) it leaves you with a buzz \u2014 a musical martini, as the composer jokes.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s often described as \u201ceclectic,\u201d but I don\u2019t think that does justice to the distinctive personality Kernis conveys in his Violin Concerto. True, there are hints\u00a0of, well, Brahms (in the emotional severity and fatalism of the first movement), Berg, Bach, Stravinsky for sure (in the finale), Messiaen (the wondrous tangles of sound in the \u201cBallad,\u201d which is also cured with jazz and blues flavors). But instead of a random\u00a0mishmash, Kernis amalgamates these idioms into a rich, compelling harmonic language and flow of ideas.<\/p>\n
One could appreciate Kernis\u2019s\u00a0score on the level of its orchestral ingenuity alone: such interesting sounds and blends, which\u00a0paradoxically erase the model of individual \u201cversus\u201d the orchestra \u2014 at least over long stretches of the piece. Paradoxically because, on the most obvious\u00a0level, this concerto it is<\/em> a virtuoso showpiece in the old school sense.<\/p>\nBut with James Ehnes\u00a0as the soloist, the clich\u00e9s often signaled by \u201cvirtuosity\u201d \u2014 mere dazzle, effects without causes \u2014\u00a0have no bearing. It\u2019s clear that Kernis tailored the piece to display this unmatchable violinist\u2019s musical intelligence, taste, and beautiful\u00a0sound production above all\u00a0incredible technical feats he calls for (of which this piece is essentially a violinist\u2019s compendium).<\/p>\n
Whether Ehnes was attacking a fearsome passage of double-stop chords with his signature elegance or deftly sprinkling a\u00a0torrent\u00a0of precisely placed pizzicati, \u00a0it was like watching\u00a0 a veteran climber scaling a particularly brutal mountain face sans ropes.<\/p>\n
But for all the thrills and escapades, the\u00a0overall impression he left of the concerto \u2014 which Kernis has dedicated to Ehnes\u00a0\u2014 was of a rich, many-colored, joyful\u00a0composition that has something compelling\u00a0to say, and that resonates afterward.<\/p>\n
Again, this is all part of the extraordinary balance Kernis has achieved in his\u00a0Violin Concerto, overriding\u00a0binaries of dark\/light, intense\/carefree, Apollonian\/Dionysian, \u201cserious\u201d\/enjoyable.<\/p>\n
Morlot \u2014\u00a0a big part of this success in the less obvious task of precision-engineering\u00a0and calibrating Kernis\u2019s\u00a0complex orchestral apparatus \u2014 was a deeply \u00a0sympathetic collaborator in this premiere.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(c) 2017 Thomas May. All rights reserved.<\/em><\/p>\nSee the full article here:\u00a0https:\/\/memeteria.com\/2017\/03\/17\/a-j-kerniss-killer-new-violin-concerto-at-seattle-symphony\/?platform=hootsuite<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
March 17, 2017 In\u00a0last night\u2019s\u00a0Seattle Symphony concert led by Ludovic Morlot, \u00a0James Ehnes introduced a\u00a0brand-new violin concerto written for him by one of today\u2019s finest composers, Aaron Jay Kernis. This was the U.S. premiere; last week Ehnes gave\u00a0the world premiere in Toronto (a co-commissioner with SSO). Talk about making a great first impression! Despite \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"related-artist":[16],"class_list":{"0":"post-454","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-press","7":"related-artist-aaron-jay-kernis","8":"entry","9":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dworkincompany.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dworkincompany.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dworkincompany.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dworkincompany.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dworkincompany.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/dworkincompany.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":786,"href":"https:\/\/dworkincompany.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454\/revisions\/786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dworkincompany.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dworkincompany.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dworkincompany.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454"},{"taxonomy":"related-artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dworkincompany.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/related-artist?post=454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dworkincompany.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/memetria-logo-300x36.jpg\"){kind=logo}
<\/p>\n