Rachel Yonan: Kiss On Wood
Sono Luminus

This commendably concise collection by violist Rachel Yonan oscillates smoothly between the metaphysical and the physical. Smart curatorial choices establish a through-line from its transcendent framing pieces, Arvo Pärt's Fratres and Spiegel im Spiegel, to the playfully earthy work at its centre, Robert Schumann's Märchenbilder, with James MacMillan's titular piece inhabiting a middle ground. Recorded over three August days in 2022 at Sono Luminus Studios in Boyce, Virginia, the forty-one-minute recording partners Yonan with pianist Kwan Yi, a world-class player who's performed around the globe and serves as associate professor of piano at the East Carolina University School of Music.

Like Yi, Yonan's appeared as a soloist and chamber musician on concert stages throughout the world, as both a solo artist and with the Marinus Ensemble, which she co-founded with her brother, cellist Joseph Kuipers. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and Rice University, Yonan has taught viola performance and chamber music at Duke University and is a Visiting Scholar at Jesus College, University of Cambridge. Her scholarship extends beyond music into theology and philosophy and thus finds a natural outlet in the works by Pärt and MacMillan performed on the release.

Pärt's haunting Fratres (1977) requires little introduction, universally recognized as it now is as one of the late-twentieth century's most iconic pieces. Singlehandedly embodying the austere musical style he embraced after composing in a serialist and avant-garde mode during the ‘60s, Fratres reduces music to its barest essentials: two voices entwining, one arpeggiating a triad and the other moving more freely but diatonically. As the music advances, the relationship between the instruments is fraught with tension yet also symbiotic. With elements repeating throughout (nine rotations, to be precise), motion is undeniably present but stillness too (one might be reminded of Nietzsche's “eternal recurrence”). In this arrangement, the piano acts as the steadying force, the viola the untethered spirit. True to the nature of the piece, Yonan's playing ranges from serene and tender to agitated, raw, and even frenzied in this mesmerizing rendition with her articulate recital partner.

Written in 1993 and tonally complementary to Fratres, MacMillan's meditative Kiss on Wood appears here in its premiere recording for viola and piano (Yonan's own arrangement). To create the material, the Scottish composer paraphrased liturgical text (“Behold the wood of the cross on which the saviour of the world was hung: come let us adore him”) that references the idea of people coming forward to kiss the wood of the cross—an image that in a single gesture bridges the physical and metaphysical. Plaintive in the extreme, the material exudes a powerful poignant pull as it ventures through passages of anguish and tender supplication. The lamenting episode that emerges midway through is exceptionally well-handled by Yonan and Yi, as both allow the material to unfold in poetic slow motion and register with maximum force.

Schumann's Märchenbilder (Fairytale Pictures) offers a refreshingly earthy and playful counterpart to the mystical and devotional tones of the opening pieces. Written for viola and piano in just three or four days during February 1851, Märchenbilder comprises four self-contained vignettes, each given a distinctive character. “Nicht Schnell” (Not Fast) enraptures with expressions by turn wistful, melancholy, and yearning, after which “Lebhaft” (Lively) injects, well, liveliness into the proceedings with buoyant interplay. While “Rasch” (Hastily) dazzles by opening and closing in a frenzy, it also makes room for a delicate episode in between. The closing movement, marked "Langsam, mit melancholischem Ausdruck" (Slowly, with melancholy expression), reinstates the lyrical longing articulated in the opening movement to resolve the work on an andante cantabile note.

July 2025