The Eberli Ensemble Chamber Music Of Aaron Jay Kernis

This collection of chamber music, written over the course of more than a decade, shows Kernis composing in a number of different styles with consistent creativity and artistic success. The earliest work on this disc, "Meditation", was written as a response to the shooting of former Beatle John Lennon. Based on 'the tonal harmonies and melodic shapes of Lennon's beautiful song "Imagine", Meditation sounds like parts of Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time -- specifically, the rapturous fifth movement -- but recomposed along even more static (yet emotionally gripping) lines. "Before Sleep and Dreams", written in the late 1980s, is a suite of five piano pieces that purports to depict a small child's getting ready for bed. Kernis looks deeply into his material and sees that sleep is death's brother, and the music's innocence is tempered by the realization -- although it is not made explicit -- of darker colors and more existential thoughts. Kernis's piano writing is marvelously distinctive, and full of rhythmic and harmonic interest. "The Four Seasons of Futurist Cuisine" (to use its English title) is an outrageous work first performed in 1991. Scored for violin, cello, piano, and narrator, it's a setting of Italian artist F.T. Marinetti's 'cookbook' cum artistic manifesto. In these texts, Marinetti seems to be asking, 'What should our gleamingly efficient new art taste like?' The result is brilliantly surreal -- a synesthetic banquet, if you will. Kernis leaps into the fray with both feet, composing music that is at times fiery, at times tender, but never far from nose-thumbing mockery. He has a great deal of fun quoting other composers -- everyone from Bruckner to Chopin -- but no matter how absurd it all seems, perhaps Kernis is saying that the right combination of familiar ingredients can give rise to the most wonderfully unfamiliar stews. Air is the most recent work on this CD. It already has been recorded for Argo by Joshua Bell in its version for violin and orchestra. The music has a wide-open-spaces feel, but it also sounds intensely personal and romantic. Kernis dedicated it to his wife, who is the pianist on this recording.