Pulitzer-Prize winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis presented a new song-cycle “The Four Seasons of Futurist Cuisine” for piano, violin, cello and narrator (Madison Symphony Orchestra conductor John DeMain), as part of the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society Festival (June 28-29, 2008 Madison, WI).
Excerpt from The Capital Times:
The piece prominently features the radical (and occasionally hilarious) text of Italian Futurist F.T. Marinetti, who declared in his 1932 “Futurist Cookbook” that pasta was a pathetic addiction to nostalgia and the cause of Italians’ debilitating lethargy. But “Four Seasons” also has a dark undercurrent — the Futurists were committed to war as a cleansing agent and celebrated the mechanization of society. Kernis captures this with a dissonant, angry accompaniment to the text in the piano, violin and cello. One of the tricky things about the piece is sometimes if there’s too much background, it will seem like an academic thing,” Kernis said. “I’d like it to seem like a happening, something that’s really quite unusual that will take the listener by surprise.”
