Ehnes program a strong three-for-four
The violinist's local premier of a new Kernis "memory piece" should have been the finale.
A concert, like a story, knows when it wants to stop. Violinist James Ehnes' program for the Chamber Music Society of Philadelphia at the Perelman Theater Thursday had two extraordinary closes: the requisite pre-intermission climax - J.S. Bach's "Chaconne" (from
the Partita No. 2 in D Minor
) - and, in its local premier, the work that should have ended the evening, Aaron Jay Kernis'
Two Movements (with Bells)
.
It isn't often that 17 minutes of new music will hold the house's attention or make a critic wish to hear it again - and this on a World Series night when the home team was playing.
Two Movements (with Bells)
, written last year on a BBC commission for Ehnes, 32, is a beauty, and arresting as it manages to build and develop its motives, principally chromatic, in the restless, intense first movement. There are no literal bells, but clusters in the piano part.
In a program note, Kernis describes it as a memory piece for his father, Frank, who died in 2004. The elder Kernis, he says, loved jazz, blues and popular ballads, and these are influences for the new work - though few are overt, and none is cliched. The composer suggests the bell sounds might be funerary, or "bells of distant memory."
The second movement has improvisational and rhythmic shifts, and is mournful without being depressing. It suggests free-form jazz with virtuoso writing for the string instrument and makes the keyboard flatter the violin. Ehnes and Andrew Armstrong, his excellent piano partner, are eloquent advocates for music that is palpable, and excites.
If only they'd stopped there. Instead, the young duo went on to a fourth work, which didn't do them justice. The Strauss
Violin Sonata in E-Flat Major (Op. 18
), dates from 1887-88, and after the invigorations of 2007 felt like a cameo of human hair.
Ehnes' tone is a delight, his control vast, and he has finesse, all qualities matched by Armstrong. The men showed considerable grace during the romanticism of the "Improvisation: Andante Cantabile," which suggests the scene in
Now, Voyager
when Bette Davis transforms into a glamour gal. But the finale's bluster was tough going after three compelling performances, including the gargantuan "Chaconne," in which Ehnes had pulled enormous spirit from the four strings of his 1715 Strad. Bach's harmonies were ardent, the bow dipping and crossing again and again, and when Ehnes was done, most of the house came to its feet.
The program had gotten off to a brilliant start with Mozart's
Sonata in A Major (K. 526
), which promoted invigoration, underlined Ehnes's lyricism and his partner's bell-like pianism, and paved the way for the Kernis premiere.