PS21, Tuesday, August 20, 2024
Miranda Cuckson, violin, and Conor Hanick, piano
Iannis Xenakis, “Mikka S.”
J. S. Bach, Partita no. 2 in D minor
Charles Ives, Three Songs (“The Housatonic at Stockbridge,” “Like a Sick Eagle,” “Songs My Mother
Taught Me”)
Aaron Copland, Violin Sonata
Violinist Miranda Cuckson offered a recital for the House Blend concert series at PS21 on Tuesday, August 20, which featured both rare and not-so-rare repertory, all performed with a rare style that fused precision and elegance with passionate intensity and successful risk-taking. It is tempting to use the word “elite” to describe the resulting experience, if the word can be understood without the negative connotations of “elitism.” The fact is that all great musical experiences are “elite” in that they are created by musicians who occupy a rarified pinnacle of talent and achievement, whether they be Taylor Swift, Brad Mehldau, or Yuja Wang. And in Miranda Cuckson and her pianist-partner Conor Hanick, PS21 has found and featured two elite artists that happen to be “classical” musicians who share a rare sense of style, adventure, and program-building.
The rarest item on Cuckson’s program was Iannis Xenakis’s “Mikka S.,” a short violin solo of 1975. Composed as an elaboration of an earlier work (“Mikka”) from 1971, it is a study in micro-tones and short glissandi (slides) performed on two strings at a time. Technically, it pushes the boundaries of what a single violinist (who actually sounds like two players) can do. It requires the most refined precision of intonation, something that would not be possible with the standard vibrato that violinists habitually employ. The work is atmospheric and mysterious, emotionally close to a lament but lacking self-indulgence. There is a wonderful moment when the pitches of the two strings come so close together (micro-tonally) that they start to beat rapidly, taking the experience into a new dimension. Cuckson did not shy away from allowing the music to dramatically redefine the sound of her instrument.
Not so rare was the next item, Bach’s Partita no. 2 in D minor, the one that concludes with the very famous “Chaconne.” Cuckson’s performance on her modern violin was continuously informed by what has been learned from the early-instrument movement, especially in the realm of performance rhetoric. That means that the emphasis on tonal weight and richness is replaced by a leaner sound, pointed articulation, and “grammatical” shaping of phrases, parallel to what an eloquent speaker might do. My companion at the concert commented that, in the Gigue, he heard the violin “speaking” in a discourse whose emotional intention was clearly expressed. The culminating chaconne, a work in danger of becoming overly familiar, emerged with a rare intensity owing to a performance that fearlessly built tension through carefully maintained tempo relations; the virtuoso arpeggiations at the end of the first section held to a rock-solid pace, and the quieter middle section in D major did not interrupt the through line of an intensity that built from beginning to end. The chaconne is full of chords played on all four strings, many of which make of use open strings, which most players would prefer to avoid, owing to the rawness of their sound. But Cuckson took advantage of that quality to add resonance and bite to her uncompromisingly logical and powerful interpretation.
The second portion of the program consisted of significant American works with piano accompaniment. First, there was a set of three songs by Charles Ives, items which are fortunately becoming much less rare in song recitals. This repertory also lends itself to instrumental performance, allowing purely musical qualities to reveal themselves in the absence of lyrics, which were not even printed in the program. The first song, “The Housatonic at Stockbridge,” was Ives’ reduction of his orchestral work of that title, the third section of “Three Places in New England.” The title might have been a sufficient prompt for the audience to imagine a natural scene, with mystical overtones, of a river flowing calmly but with increasing turbulence, to conclude in a sudden, mysterious echo of the river’s song, suggesting arrival at an ocean and preparation for cyclic recurrence. Here, the piano plays the very active role. The performers maintained a balance in which the violin’s simple song served as an interior element of the piano’s complex texture. Pianist Hanick’s calibrated touch managed that texture by delineating its several layers with dynamic precision.
The second song, “Like a Sick Eagle,” is a study in short descending slides, like a failing voice; Ives composed it at a time when his wife was hospitalized. This was a canny program choice, evoking the Xenakis piece and blending the fear of illness with a final note of determined hopefulness. The set concluded with the more conventional “Songs My Mother Taught Me,” an English version of the famous Dvorak song of the same name, and one of the many songs that Ives composed on texts previously used by European masters. Although these early works are often viewed as student or apprentice exercises, some, including this one, are full-formed masterful examples of late-19th-century song and demonstrate Ives’ technical proficiency at managing the delicate balances of tonal harmony and romantic text expression. The song allowed Cuckson to display her mastery of a full-blown romantic lyricism, one that did not require the poetic line “tears are falling” to make its point.
The final item on the program was Aaron Copland’s Violin Sonata of 1943, the same year that produced his ballet “Appalachian Spring.” It is one of his important purely instrumental works, but is not often included in recitals. The reason for this may be that it is in a modern, edgy style, has a complex piano part that is intricately interwoven with the violin, and aside from a solo passage near the start of the third movement, does little to allow the violin to indulge in lyrical display. Its many tempo shifts demand fine coordination from the performers, and it is tricky, wonderfully dancey, and must be played with perfect rhythmic precision. It is audience-friendly, with some of the familiar virtues of Copland’s “greatest hits,” along with a firm compositional logic that fuses its three movements into a single, unified experience. But although apparently pastoral and suggestive of open spaces (typically “Copland-esque”), it has complex emotional undertones that form a balance with the more obviously benign surfaces. It is not surprising to learn that the work was written as a form of memorial to a friend who was killed in action during the war that was raging at that time. Copland, like Mozart, was able to compose on two levels: an apparently cheerful one for the more casual listener and a more complex and intricate one for those who choose to explore it more thoroughly. It was to those audience members that Cuckson and Hanick directed their interpretation, and the results were not just pleasing, but actually thrilling.
