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The Kernis Project: Debussy

Jasper String Quartet

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This album marks the culmination of our decade-long journey with Aaron Jay Kernis’s music for string quartet. From the moment we put bow to string for Aaron’s Second Quartet, we realized his special voice and our connection to his music’s ability to capture both the complexity of the world and the simplicity of a moment. This depth fascinated us, inspired our playing and prompted us to dream of commissioning Aaron’s Third Quartet.

Six years later, after performing and recording his first two Quartets and organizing the commission, we received the first movement of his Third Quartet “River”. As the movements accumulated in our inbox, so did our sense of excitement and dread. It was clear that this piece surpassed its two preceding quartets in complexity and difficulty. The route forward was clear enough, but still daunting. Practice, rehearse, repeat. Through the spring and into the summer the piece started to take shape. Coalescing first a little at a time – glimmers of cleverness, brilliance, atmosphere amid the musical and technical challenges. As those moments grew to sections and then movements that began to make sense, we started to build them into the larger arc.

The quartet is subtitled “River”, an analogy for the constancy of change in our lives. The music too is constantly evolving, from moment to moment never predictable, never repeating itself. The flow of ideas isn’t one but four-dimensional, swirling constantly backward and forward in time and space. Yet there is a calculation of purpose, a consideration of form and care to structure that keeps the music grounded and allows a story to build out of the organic chaos.

The parallels between this music and Debussy’s iconic quartet are both coincidental and foreseeable. Programmed together before we knew anything of what Kernis’s quartet would be, the Debussy was nevertheless a perfect fit. Perhaps any quartet so carefully crafted and so imaginative would have illuminated parallels with Aaron’s new piece, yet it seems the two works share a specific ethos in their style and execution – both sharply bold and thoughtfully humble.

‘My 3rd string quartet (“River”) is a significant departure from my earlier two quartets, which looked to the distant past for form and inspiration. Instead, this new work dispenses with classical structure and influences almost completely, touching continually on processes of change and flux.

‘Far more at issue here are literary influences which helped shape and color the emotional tone of its five movements and prompted countless reflections on compositional process at this time in my life.

‘This new quartet looks at change, flow and flux of musical materials and information rather than the constancy of harmony, rhythmic and formal structures that my earlier quartets embrace.

‘String Quartet #3 (“River”) is dedicated in loving memory of singer and Astral Foundation artistic director Julian Rodescu, who touched countless lives with his artistry, generosity and friendship, and who laid the cornerstone for this collaboration with the Jasper Quartet. It was written for and is dedicated to the members of the Jasper Quartet who give its first recording here, and was generously commissioned by Caramoor, Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Classic Chamber Concerts (Naples, FL), Chamber Music Monterey Bay (CA), Chamber Music Northwest (OR) and Chamber Music America’s Classical Commissioning program funded by a generous grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.’

– Aaron Jay Kernis

 

Tracklist

Please note that the below previews are loaded as 44.1 kHz / 16 bit.
1.
String Quartet No. 3 'River' - I. Source
08:29
2.
String Quartet No. 3 'River' - II. Flow-Surge
04:06
3.
String Quartet No. 3 'River' - III. Mirrored Surface - Flux - Reflections
10:55
4.
String Quartet No. 3 'River' - IV. Cavatina
04:39
5.
String Quartet No. 3 'River' - V. Mouth-Estuary
09:11
6.
String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 10, L. 85 - I. Anime et tres decide
06:40
7.
String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 10, L. 85 - II. Assez vif et bien rythme
03:57
8.
String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 10, L. 85 - III. Andantino, doucement expressif
07:11
9.
String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 10, L. 85 - IV. Tres modere
07:25

Total time: 01:02:33

Additional information

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DSL92233

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Release DateJune 14, 2019

Press reviews

Classical Modern Music Review

In the world we believe we are a part of there is never a last word, ideally, on the music we hold dear to ourselves, nor is there ever an end to the ongoing addition of works that come to be part of our personal recognitions, our “things we ever like” shopping list on any given day. Auspiciously both are present on a very rewarding listen by the Jasper String Quartet, via an album entitled The Kernis Project: Debussy (Sono Luminus DSL-92233). On it we hear a new take on an older classic and new music to be taken hold of, a new-old and a new-new.

To untangle the poetic web of word images it needs to be said that this album gives us the Jasper Quartet’s very fine readings of “String Quartet No. 3, ‘River,'” by Aaron Jay Kernis and Claude Debussy’s “String Quartet in G minor, Op. 10.” No doubt most will know the Debussy. On the other hand, the Kernis Quartet will doubtless be something new, as it enjoys a pre-eminent Jasper focus after they had commissioned it and it has had a chance to mature in their hands since its completion in 2015.

The Jasper Quartet’s enthusiasm for Kernis is long-standing. They have covered the earlier quartets in several volumes, to critical and popular acclaim. I must make a note of hearing those but at any rate this Kernis Third has a great deal of substance and depth. It is filled with melodic-harmonic complexities, rich shades in the manner of the deepest-of-the deep quartets from Beethoven on. It is a Quartet’s Quartet and clearly, the Jasper Quartet has meshed with its maze of details in an intensity of commitment and scope that brings to us directly the brilliance of the work. On a continuum is tonal but complexly so, like parts of the Bartok opus perhaps, but a bit less obviously Modern and then again not altogether removed from the performance partner quartet on this program.

So it is fitting that the Kernis is presented along with the Debussy, for they are in no way unrelated to one another in their lyric color and expressive dash. The Jasper approach to the pizzicato parts in the Debussy is as wonderful as I have heard, and there is a real sweetness and passion to this reading that puts it something closer to the Budapest Quartet’s classic LP performance than a more Minimal-Modern brusqueness that one can also hear these days, sometimes quite nicely so. The Jasper Quartet uncovers a high level of lyric feeling without going Romantic in the end and so all the better. It sounds like a reading of our time and fits a nice space in the spectrum of possible contemporary performances.

In sum there is a great deal to digest, to explore, to learn from and to enjoy this program. The Jasper Quartet is among the very best such groups working today and they bring us a sterling Kernis and a heartening Debussy. You cannot lose here in that there is so much good happening you are bound to be pleased I think. Give it an earful.

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