Violin Concerto No. 2

Ron Blessinger, soloist

Hang around one of those blue Yves Klein paintings long enough and you’ll eventually hear a fellow museumgoer say, “a four year old child can do that.” Robert Kyr’s second violin concerto might elicit the same response. With pentatonic melodies that rise and fall over a ground bass with the regularity of ocean tides, the work is deceptively simple. Swathes of canonic counterpoint constantly shift hues between an orchestra of Western instruments and a Balinese gamelan, adding a deeper geographical dimension to Kyr’s extended title “On the Nature of Harmony.”

—RN