Karl Kohn was born in Vienna, but emigrated as a teenager to the United States, where he studied at Harvard University with teachers including Walter Piston, Irving Fine, and Randall Thompson. His music is complex in its texture and harmony, using a highly chromatic approach to tonality and frequently featuring a dense fabric of independent lines. Large structures are strictly organized and phrases are clearly defined, connecting his work to the tradition of the great masters while simultaneously establishing a distinctive compositional voice. Concert Music was written for the strings of the Colburn School orchestra and given its first performance by that ensemble; tonight's program features the second public presentation of the work. The string writing is idiomatic throughout, taking frequent advantage of open strings for added sonority and employing a wide range of natural harmonics in the basses.
The piece opens with a chord that might be considered "semi-dissonant:" not consonant in the ordinary sense, but serving as a point of departure for the harmonic progress of the movement. Furthermore, this chord reappears frequently, especially early on, with subtle changes in its registration or pitch content reflecting the evolution of the movement. These frequent references to the psychological starting point of the movement provide the listener with a tool to keep track of the structural progress and expressive ebb and flow. A more agitated central section is more contrapuntal, but the entire string section breathes as a single organism, with rests and dynamic surges all corresponding. Later in the movement, a simpler idea begins to emerge: repeated notes, all equal length, on a single chord. In the context of all of the previous harmonic activity, such temporary stasis takes on a significance of its own. The repeated notes grow in influence in the movement's brief closing section, where the tempo is slightly faster and the texture is lighter, reflecting a release of some of the dramatic tension.
The second movement is structurally less elaborate. The opening section is in a lyrical character, with the most important melodic material usually in the first violins or violas. The tempo quickens to bring the music to a march-like middle section, but the alert rhythms do not last long. Instead, the descending figure which dominates the brief march disintegrates, giving way to the lyricism of the opening. The movement's haunting coda features the first violins trying to choose between two possible final pitches while the rest of the ensemble explores slight modifications of a single harmony.
The third movement assumes the role of clarifying previous issues: for instance, the groups of repeated notes that gradually intruded upon the counterpoint of the first movement take center stage here. But the lyricism of the earlier movements is present as well, sometimes in the violins as they oppose running notes in the lower strings, and other times in the full ensemble, in counterpoint similar in spirit the first movement. About halfway through, the music fades out into nothing, leading to a transforming passage where reminiscences of the second movement alternate with the groups of repeated notes that most characterize the finale. Before long, however, the second movement is gone forever, and the energy remains high all the way until the closing moments. The piece comes to rest harmonically on a dissonance, but the simplifications of rhythm and texture ensure that the dramatic tension has been resolved.