Earl Kim was born in
California and studied with the Pacific
Coast elite: Schoenberg, Bloch and Sessions.
Even so he emerged as a determined romanticist
with a fastidious and craftsmanly way
with the orchestra.
The concise Violin
Concerto is in two parts of which
the first is in five segments and the
second in three. It has a sustained
pianissimo introduction suggestive of
some far distant benediction. This mood
is picked up by the solo violin in a
Chausson-meets-Berg Episode 1. This
is followed by a wildly jagged dissonant
section for the soloist. Much of the
extensive peaceful material can be likened
to an amalgam between Mahler's Adagietto,
Holst's Neptune and Berg's Violin Concerto.
Here is a composer clearly very much
at home with beautiful tonal sounds
that sometimes tip modestly into Bergian
atonalism. At times the music is dependent
for its effect on repetition. The work
ends with well-judged dramatics. Arzewski
gives an admirable performance and is
unflinchingly recorded. The work was
written for Perlman but I would be surprised
if his performance was more impressive
than this one.
The even shorter Dialogues
for piano and orchestra are from
two decades before the concerto. This
work bears much more evidence of avant-garde
rupture and discontinuity. The fragmentation
and juxtaposition of gentle lyrical
moments with so much gestural assault
is not endearing; nor does it tempt
a revisit.
The last work on the
disc is a 25 minute piece for orator
and orchestra setting Rainer Maria Rilke's
narrative poem: Cornet. This
is the same poem set, over a more epic
span, by Frank Martin. While Martin's
music is dour and granitic Kim's has
a light and silvery quality that suggests
a Russian miniature painting. Kim here
projects a continuously illustrative
feeling as if the notes are initiated
and spurred at every instant by the
poem rather than the music ever taking
over an imperious role. With music as
the handmaid this is a pleasing way
to encounter Rilke's poem in English
translation. Memorable is the evocation
of the death of the Cornet in a whirlwind
of scimitar blades. The overall effect
is aided by the Eastern-American accent
of Kim's nephew Robert, a one-time actor
and now New York photographer of actors.
The informative notes
are by Paul Salerni.
Kim’s Violin Concerto
is the real draw here beside the sterile
Dialogues and the passive but imaginatively
illustrative Rilke melodrama.
Rob Barnett
Cecylia Arzewski (violin) 
