“The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra has joined with the Detroit Symphony, the Chautauqua Institution and the Peabody School of Music to commission a new flute concerto by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis,” writes Jann Nyffeler in Friday’s (1/29) Democrat & Chronicle (Rochester, N.Y.) The concerto was written for flutist Marina Piccinini, who performed in the world premiere by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra on January 21 and will perform in the Rochester premiere on February 4 and 6. “A continuous musical thread connects the four movements, Kernis explains…. He had been playing a lot of works by Scarlatti last year, he says … lending an ‘Italianate gentleness’ to it.… Of the four movements—Portrait, Pastorale-Barcarolle, Pavan and Tarantella—Kernis is toying with calling that last movement Taran-Tulla. In it, you’ll hear echoes of the performance style of the classic rock group Jethro Tull. The band’s leader and flute player, Ian Anderson, used a technique that involved singing and playing simultaneously, and that’s what flutist Piccinini does in the Taran-Tulla, with a little flutter-tonguing, too, in its improvised cadenza.” The Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra will perform the concerto in August, and the Peabody Symphony Orchestra will perform it in April 2017.
Posted February 1, 2016
