The sky has loomed large in Aaron Jay Kernis's 25-year composing career. His latest work to arrive in the UK is Newly Drawn Sky, premiered in Chicago three years ago and inspired by the changing colours of dusk over the sea. The sonorous opening, of peaceful, thickly woven viola and cello lines punctuated by moments of plucked-string throbbing, suggests depth beneath a rippling surface; a later episode, with a yearning clarinet above wistful basses, returns to this darker palette. Yet the faster, glittery stuff grows from this a little too easily. At the climax of the 15-minute score, one expects the music to rest complacently. It does not, but a taste of apple-pie Americana remains. Kernis may be looking out on a fathomless vista, but there is a heated beach hut right behind him.
Next to Classic FM stalwarts Rachmaninov and Vaughan Williams, one might have thought that Kernis would be in good, cosy company. Far from it. If everybody played Rachmaninov with the muscle and grit Stephen Hough brought here to the relatively little-heard First Piano Concerto, the composer could wave goodbye to that comfortable image. Hough has recorded all the composer's concertos with Andrew Litton, and they make an ideal team, stripping the music of cloying sentiment.Vaughan Williams's Fourth Symphony is an image-buster in itself, blasting away fluttering larks with an opening that seems to spring from the middle of something tortured by Shostakovich. Litton, a US champion of UK music, launched the orchestra fearlessly at this restless score, with only the gleaming flute solo of the second movement providing real repose. Would the final onslaught have had even more impact if he had held back more beforehand? Maybe, but Litton knows how to make a loud orchestra sound good, and the BBCSO, playing together with almost percussive accuracy, were on top form for him.
