Tantalus, c. 1630–40 (oil on canvas) by Gioacchino Assereto. Eggenberg Castle, Graz. Unable to sate his appetites as the fruit tree pulls its branches away whenever he reaches for them, Tantalus represents the ambivalent nature of desire and possession that inspired Ellen Reid’s Desiderium.
A Recital by Pekka Kuusisto
violin and Nico Muhly piano By Joel Rust
Pekka Kuusisto’s multi-hyphenate artistry—as a violinist-composer-arranger-conductor-curator—is on full display in this program, which centers on his collaborations with Nico Muhly. Muhly has described Kuusisto as “a really great thinker about music—it’s reflected in this insane physicality . . . the minute the bow touches the string, something magical happens.”
This will be heard from the beginning of the Largo from J. S. Bach’s Sonata in C major, a piece for violin alone. Kuusisto’s programs have frequently featured Bach’s Partita in D minor, which culminates in the Chaconne that forms one of the pillars of the violin repertoire; for the most part, the Largo is subtler fare, showcasing Bach’s melodic gifts. (But not, of course, without a few harmonic surprises.)
For the next piece, Kuusisto is joined by string orchestra. Michael Tippett’s short work A Lament was part of a collection of variations written by British composers to commemorate the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953. Benjamin Britten coordinated the project and selected as its “theme” a keyboard piece written during the reign of the previous Queen Elizabeth—William Byrd’s Sellinger’s Round.
But Tippett’s movement, which is marked Andante espressivo, is not of a celebratory character. The solo violin plays Byrd’s melody, but it has been transformed to a minor key and is greatly slowed down, and the spaces between the notes are filled with trembling, shuddering gestures. The piece features another quotation: its recurring bass line is taken from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, a piece that ends with the death of Queen Dido. Tippett’s variation adds solemnity to the piece, a reminder that Elizabeth’s ascension to the throne was only possible due to the death of the predecessor, her father. The solo violin melody stands slightly removed from the string orchestra—often not the center of attention, it provides an emotional commentary upon the beautiful, bleak, overlapping lines of the harmonies below.
The next work, Ellen Reid’s Desiderium, was written specifically for Pekka Kuusisto, whom Reid calls “one of the most creative, unique, and captivating violinists of our time,” and is dedicated to Jaakko Kuusisto, Pekka’s brother. Jaako was, like Pekka, a violinist, composer, and conductor of great distinction. He passed away due to brain cancer in February 2022 shortly after the work’s first performance.
The title came from Reid’s search for an equivalent to saudade—the Portuguese term for a mixture of longing and nostalgia, an emotion deeply intertwined with Fado music. The piece moves back and forth between painful torment and peaceful remembrance, with continuous sections titled “Lost in Rage” and “Erupting,” but also “A Quiet, Simple, Longing” and “Breezy.” But it ends with “Savage, Rapturous Joy”: “You want this thing you can’t have, and by the end you’re glad you had it at some point.” Beyond this, Reid says, the piece “is inspired by family: the warmth of the highs, the anguish of the lows, the whole world.”
Drones & Violin brings Kuusisto into dialogue with Nico Muhly as both composer and pianist. The two musicians first worked together in 2009 on Impossible Things, Muhly’s song cycle for tenor, violin, and string orchestra on poems by C. P. Cavafy; the present work dates from 2011, and they have remained collaborators since. Drones—notes or small groups of notes that are sustained while other melodies, harmonies, and rhythms happen on top of them—are a crucial component of many of the world’s musical traditions. Muhly points to another source, though: “The idea is something not unlike singing along with one’s vacuum cleaner or with the subtle but constant humming found in most dwelling places. We surround ourselves with constant noise, and the Drones pieces are an attempt to honor these drones and stylize them.”
In a typical violin-piano duo, the pianist falls into the role of accompanist, while the violin is the focal point. Drones & Violin does not follow that blueprint. For one thing, the piano is not naturally inclined towards playing drones, as its sound dies away unless the notes are re-articulated. Drones also tend to be lower in the musical texture, so the violin is also not quite in its element. Muhly therefore alternates which instrument carries the drone and uses the fragility of the sounds to great effect.
The four sections share the understated subtitle “Material,” which suggests their improvisatory character. Muhly says that “rests are meant to be played freely, expanding and contracting as the spirit moves the soloists.” As the work’s composer and dedicatee, the pair take some further liberties with the score. Muhly also gives the droning player permission “to subtly and constantly change the nature of the sound,” a freedom of which the pair—with their close attention to the details of the timbres of their instruments—takes full advantage.
The first section, Material in E-flat, begins with the violin playing simple two-note chords that are in harmony with the piano’s drone. But the violin’s line spirals away from this, to notes that have more distant relationships with the drone. The second, Material in Sevenths, flips the relationship, with the piano initially bolstering the violin’s drone before drifting away.
The title of the third, Material in Two Keys, indicates that it starts with a more antagonistic relationship between the instruments, and it also features noisier, more extreme sonorities. In the fourth section, Material with Shifting Drones, the instruments switch back and forth between the two roles, leading to a return of the violin line from the opening of the piece—only, now, it is more rhythmic and energetic, driving the piece to a close.
Kuusisto has been active in a range of genres, bringing his violin playing to Metal, Jazz, Rock, and Folk. He has also championed the music of his native Finland—not only its distinguished classical heritage but also its other genres. These interests come to the fore in his solo violin arrangement of Barcarole by Finnish Jazz pianist and harpist Iro Haarla, which brings out its folky flavors.
Andrea Tarrodi’s Paradisfåglar takes its inspiration from birds of paradise—the forty-five species of New Guinea-dwelling birds who are known for their often fabulous plumage and elaborate mating displays. Despite their limited range, the birds have evolved astoundingly varied features, a function of New Guinea’s rugged terrain and many ecological niches.
The piece is filled with bird-like calls, with Tarrodi using different string instrument techniques to depict their abundance and variety. But the composer is also painting a picture, drawing on her experience of synaesthesia: “I approach music from a visual perspective. Different notes and chords have different colors.” Tarrodi’s piece imagines a forest of lush greens and rich browns, with flashes of the birds’ blues, oranges, and iridescent blacks bursting out.
Mad Rush was composed by Philip Glass in 1979 for the first North American public address by Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama. It was originally composed for the organ of St. John the Divine in New York City, where Glass gave its first performance before the Dalai Lama’s speech; as the exact timing of his arrival was unknown, it was created to be extendable as long as necessary. Glass has had a long relationship with Tibetan Buddhism dating back to his time in India in 1966, although he has indicated that this has not had a direct impact on his music. Kuusistio’s own introduction to Glass’s music came via Muhly: “My musical education did not include works by American composers, and while I’ve since made my own explorations, Nico has in many ways functioned as my guide to New World music, past and present.”
After Drones & Violin, the pair continued collaborating on a series of works. In Muhly’s words, “they always had this dream that, someday, someone would cause this concerto to exist.” Commissioned by a consortium of orchestras and completed in 2019, that concerto (for violin and string orchestra) is Shrink, a title that he calls “technical and funny.” On the one hand, it refers to a musical procedure used to organize the development of the piece—the gradual move from large intervals to small intervals. But on the other, more abstractly, it refers to psychiatry; Muhly enjoys this untranslatable wordplay.
Kuusisto describes the piece as “ferocious” and “the culmination of this decade of music and mischief,” saying that it “will remain an important part of my life for as long as I can stretch my fingers to its demands.” Muhly has returned this high praise: “On a scale of one to ten, Pekka’s playing goes from zero to twelve,” and, unlike the very focused sound-world of Drones, the writing here takes full advantage of this range of expression. “His playing is so part of my conception of how the violin works . . . that it wrote itself very quickly.”
The concerto follows a traditional fast-slow-fast structure. The first movement, Ninths, begins with that large interval—expanded, in fact, to over four octaves. The musical texture is instantly disturbed, with fragmented figures flying between the instruments, and Muhly and Kuusisto display their artisry to maximum effect by giving the solo violin a constant spotlight above the many other string instruments, being briefly subsumed by them only to burst out once more.
The second movement, Sixths, is built around that smaller and less angular interval and pays tribute to Kuusisto’s frequent use in his solo recitals of a looping pedal; rather than an electronic or mechanical echo, the movement uses the other instruments to echo and reflect his sound. The third movement, Turns, uses yet smaller intervals and “is fast and fun, as third movements should be,” paying tribute to the rondo form with which many Classical concertos end—frantically running through the repeating, joyful violin melody. — © Joel Rust
Pekka Kuusisto is a renowned violinist, conductor, and composer celebrated for his artistic freedom and innovative approach to repertoire. He is the artistic director of the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, principal guest conductor and artistic co-director of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, and principal guest conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony starting from the 2025–26 season. Kuusisto frequently collaborates with leading orchestras worldwide, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, and NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, to name a few. In the 2024–25 season, he has performed as a soloist and conductor with various prestigious orchestras, including the Helsinki Philharmonic, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, and Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Kuusisto continues his collaboration with Gabriel Kahane as the chamber group Council following successful tours in the U.S. and Australia. Kuusisto is an enthusiastic advocate of contemporary music and a gifted improviser who regularly engages with people across the artistic spectrum. Uninhibited by conventional genre boundaries and noted for his innovative programming, recent projects have included collaborations with Hauschka and Kosminen, Dutch neurologist Erik Scherder, pioneer of electronic music Brian Crabtree, eminent Jazz trumpeter Arve Henriksen, juggler Jay Gilligan, accordionist Dermot Dunne, and Folk singer Sam Amidon.
Nico Muhly is an American composer who writes orchestral, choral, chamber, and sacred music as well as works for the stage. He has received commissions from the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, and Wigmore Hall; his choral music, both sacred and secular, has been performed by the Tallis Scholars and choirs across the United Kingdom. He has been featured at the Barbican, King’s Place, and the Philharmonie de Paris as composer, conductor, pianist, and curator. An avid collaborator, he has worked with choreographers Benjamin Millepied, Justin Peck, Kyle Abraham, and Mark Morris; vocal collaborators include Iestyn Davies, Renée Fleming, and Nicholas Phan as well as Sufjan Stevens, the National, Teitur, Anohni, James Blake, and Paul Simon. His work for screen includes scores for The Reader and Kill Your Darlings, the BBC’s adaptation of Howards End, and Pachinko for Apple TV+. He has worked with visual artists Maira Kalman, Yu Hong, and Oliver Beer, and has created site-reactive works for the National Gallery in London and the Guggenheim Museum’s Asian Art Initiative at the Venice Biennale. He has written articles for the Guardian, the New York Times, and the London Review of Books. Recordings of his works have been released by Decca and Nonesuch, and he is part of the artist-run record label Bedroom Community, which released his first two albums, Speaks Volumes (2006) and Mothertongue (2008).
Paul-Boris Kertsman is an emerging conductor and pianist noted for his expressive musicianship and instinctive connection with audiences. In the upcoming season he begins his appointment as head of music and conductor at Lucerne Theatre and joins the Aspen Music Festival as assistant conductor. He recently completed two seasons as assistant conductor of the Musikkollegium Winterthur, where he worked closely with Music Director Roberto González-Monjas, led performances, and supported renowned guest artists. Notable engagements include Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti in Lucerne, a production of Mozart’s Idomeneo directed by Michael Sturminger, and his debut at the Musikverein Vienna with the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra. He has led the Vienna Philharmonic’s Prokopp Academy, appeared on Austrian National TV, and worked with the WDR Rundfunkchor. A committed advocate for contemporary music, Kertsman has collaborated with composers including Matthias Pintscher, Chaya Czernowin, and Hannah Kendall. He debuts next season with the Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra for a festival performance of new music. Born in New York and raised in Vienna and Chicago, Kertsman completed his conducting studies with Mark Stringer at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.
