Record of the Day: Aaron Jay Kernis, “Colored Field”

Aaron Jay Kernis, “Colored Field” (Cd Argo/Decca 448174-2)

Equipped with formidable technical qualities and a rich imagination, which pushed him to be interested in many different languages, the American composer Aaron Jay Kernis distinguished himself from a very young age as one of the most personal voices on the American scene and in a short time his operas have been programmed all over the world by prestigious performers and large symphony orchestras.

If at the beginning of his career Kernis’ music was devoted to total eclecticism, capable of integrating serial elements with stylistic features taken from calypso, minimalism and rock, starting from the great symphonic works of the nineties his aesthetic became more reflective and dramatic, with works often inspired by tragic events such as the Gulf War and the Holocaust. It is precisely this immense catastrophe that the score of “Colored Field”, probably his masterpiece, is based on; it is a concerto for English horn and large orchestra written by Kernis after visiting the concentration camps at Birkenau and Auschwitz, in which the composer had observed some children walking around the meadows, eating blades of that grass that fifty years earlier it had been stained by the blood of many innocent victims.

Deeply shaken by that visit, Kernis drew directly on his own Jewish musical tradition for the first time, introducing melodic elements derived from cantillation techniques and entrusting the solo English horn with large phrases of painful intensity, sometimes supported but more often contrasted by an orchestra of enormous dimensions, teeming with bright colors in constant transformation. Here Kernis’ ability to weigh and mix the chromatic palette of the orchestra truly reaches levels of virtuosity that have few comparisons among today’s authors; but nothing purely effectual runs through this score divided into three large movements.

Ultimately, it is not a concert in the traditional sense but rather a threnody with bright and deep tones, which leaves an indelible impression from the first listen. The language is not only consonant or avant-garde, but moves between euphony and moments of harsh violence apparently following the train of thought, in reality through a structure organized in a painstaking way.

Carlo Boccadoro, composer and conductor, was born in Macerata in 1963. He lives and works in Milan. He collaborates with soloists and orchestras in different parts of the world. He is the author of numerous books on musical topics.

This text is taken from “Lunario della musica: A record for every day of the year” published by Einaudi, courtesy of the author and the publisher.