Pekka Kuusisto: First Light: Muhly & Glass
Pentatone

In the early 2000s, Nico Muhly (b. 1981) worked as an editor and conductor for Philip Glass (b. 1937), helping to arrange his music for the film The Hours as well as other duties. Their pairing on First Light thus makes sense, though one would be wrong to extrapolate from that that the younger composer is a next-generation clone of the other. If anything, the recording shows how different Muhly's style is from his one-time mentor's, at least in so far as Shrink (Concerto for Violin and Strings) can be taken as representative of his work. Whatever influence Glass exerted on Muhly has been so deeply absorbed as to be undetectable, and neither should it be overlooked that John Corigliano and Christopher Rouse were among those with whom Muhly studied at the Juilliard School.

If Glass's music cuts a broad swath, so too does Muhly's. He's composed choral music, chamber and theatrical material, and opera, specifically Two Boys and Marnie, both of which have been staged by the English National Opera (ENO) and Metropolitan Opera. His material builds on the American Minimalism tradition by transcending the tropes associated with it and allowing other influences, among them the English choral tradition and French Impressionism, to inform his writing. Rhythm isn't absent from a Muhly work, but it's rarely the kind of metronomic pulse that animates an early Glass piece. On the forty-eight-minute release, the world premiere recording of Shrink is performed by violinist, conductor, and composer Pekka Kuusisto and the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, after which appears a duet treatment of Glass's The Orchard, and finally Kuusisto's string orchestra arrangement of Glass's “Mishima” String Quartet No. 3.

Shrink might seem an odd choice of title for a violin concerto, but the work does, in fact, progressively ‘shrink' when its three movements deploy intervals of decreasing size. That detail notwithstanding, the work does adhere to a fast-slow-fast design common to the concerto form. Throughout “Ninths,” Kuusisto charts a distinct yet not unrelated course to his partners, gliding high above at one moment and swimming alongside them at another. During one episode, an ever-mutating base of pizzicatos and roiling patterns engages the ear before the attention returns to the rapturous expressions of the solo violin as it soars over an insistent ground. As captivating as “Ninths” is, it's outdone by the luminous beauty of “Sixths,” which begins in serene mode before blossoming into a more energized and impassioned expression. Without pause the central movement leads into “Turns,” initially torrential in its coupling of flurries by the soloist to long-held notes by the orchestra and the material gradually morphing into stabbing rhythmic gestures and a general sense of unstoppable drive. As the work advances, the impression forms that a natural companion to Muhly's Shrink would be John Adams' Violin Concerto from 1993.

Acting as a neat bridge between the intense Shrink and Mishima material is Glass's The Orchard, recorded remotely in 2020 by Muhly on piano in New York and Kuusisto in Helsinki. Written four years after the premiere of Mishima in 1985, The Orchard comes from The Screens, music Glass created for a Minneapolis-based staging of Jean Genet's play of the same name. Gentle chords anchor the sombre setting, with the violin as sparse in its statements and distant hints of “My Man's Gone Now,” oddly enough, seemingly emerging in the writing as the at times blues-inflected piece unfolds.

“Mishima” String Quartet No. 3 originally appeared as part of the soundtrack material Glass wrote for Paul Schrader's Mishima (the first studio film Glass scored, incidentally). Whereas some parts of the soundtrack feature symphony orchestra, the composer used string quartet for sequences focusing on the biographical details of Mishima's life, parts that would eventually become his String Quartet No. 3. Kuusisto's recasting of the material for string orchestra presents Glass's music in peak melodic and lyrical form, from the seductive sway of the opening “1957: Award Montage” to the elegiac “Mishima - Closing” five movements later. In between lies the haunting “November 25: Ichigaya,” emphatic “Grandmother and Kimitake,” muscular “1962: Body Building,” and bewitching “Blood Oath,” each brief part instantly identifiable as Glass.

As different as the three works are, the recording's unified by the presence of Kuusisto and, on the framing works, the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra. Apparently, First Light is the debut appearance of both on Pentatone and an auspicious debut it is, especially when each work is executed with scrupulous care and interpreted with an informed appreciation of its character and essence. Certainly it's the Muhly work that recommends the release most, but all three reward one's attention.

August 2021