Kernis's Second Symphony
seethes and bellows, seemingly driven
by the Furies. Thomas May's extremely
helpful booklet notes relate this work
to the Corigliano First Symphony. The
language will be familiar if you know
the 1960s symphonies of Schuman and
Bernstein. Be warned though, across
the movements (Alarm; Air/Ground;
Barricade) only the second lets
go of the cherished and constantly refuelled
anger. That second movement broods and
consoles and is most beautifully and
naturally paced. It has about it something
of Barber's Adagio in its tender
DNA. It is a most moving discovery and
one I urge you to share. High violins
sing in slow bleak paeans in Barricade
only to be joined by emphatically discordant
protesting brass and percussion. It
rises at 5:23 to a rhetorical plateau
of sustained protest and sorrow slightly
redolent of Shostakovich at his most
harrowingly intense. It is topped off
by a gong-sustained tsunami of sound.
It is a relief after
such vehement and splenetic music to
encounter Kernis's most famous piece.
This is the middle movement of his First
String Quartet transcribed by the composer
for full string orchestra. I imply no
sameness but certainly anyone who already
enjoys Pärt's Cantus or
Barber's Adagio (also the central
movement of a string quartet) needs
to seek this out. This writing is gentle,
yielding, supplicatory and emphatic
yet never hectoring. The swelling forte
blows at 5:15 are extremely moving inducing
a real frisson.
Lastly there is the
catastrophic and chasmal fury of Invisible
Mosaic III. Pumping iterative Stravinskian
writing links with seismic upheavals
from the percussion and a manichean
whiplash that recalls Ligeti, Henze
(Wreck of the Medusa) and Mennin
(Piano Concerto). The grandeur, deeply-packed
colour and orchestrational brilliance
is memorable. There is a raucous finale
of heroic uproar - a strange fusion
of Bruckner (Eighth Symphony) and Copland
(Third Symphony).
A fine collection .
In fact the place to start your
Kernis collection.
Rob Barnett
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Hugh Wolff
