Nestled just outside of Katonah, New York, the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts is a jewel of the Hudson Valley and a perennial venue for first-rate New York City–based chamber groups. On July 28, the venue played host to one such group, The Knights, and to the noted Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto.
Kuusisto was on hand to deliver the East Coast premiere of Shrink, a work that the composer Nico Muhly wrote expressly for him. Muhly himself attended the premiere, which was long anticipated, having been scheduled twice before but stymied by COVID restrictions.
First on the program, however, was Mendelssohn’s String Symphony No. 10 in B minor, the tenth of thirteen symphonies that Mendelssohn composed as a child. Symphony No. 10 exists today as a single movement, although the construction of Mendelssohn’s adjacent symphonies suggests that it had at least two other movements that have been lost to time.
The Knights approached the extant movement with subtlety. Their interpretation of the adagio exposition was fittingly pensive, and they provided the requisite emotional breadth to Mendelssohn’s swift segue to the allegro development. There was also a certain airiness to The Knights’ rendition that served it well: they maintained light, smooth bow strokes even in fortissimo moments. Their dynamics were strong and tasteful—not unduly dramatic. Thanks to the leadership of concertmaster Colin Jacobsen, the players maintained their unison throughout the symphony, which was unconducted.
Shrink came next on the program. While Kuusisto had previously played the piece without a conductor, he elected this time to perform under the baton of Eric Jacobsen, Colin’s younger brother.
Billed as a “concerto for violin and strings,” Shrink has three movements, each of which, as Muhly explained in prefatory remarks, represents an obsession with progressively small compositional tools—hence the title.
The first movement saw Kuusisto jump up and down the fingerboard in moments of urgency interspersed with sustained ninths. This pattern was punctuated by the intermittent use of simultaneous arco and pizzicato, which imparted a folksy sensibility. In accompaniment, The Knights’ strings were at first uniform and fast-moving, progressing from pizzicato to bowed eighth-note triplets, before scattering in different directions.
The second movement, focusing on sixths, was considerably slower. Kuusisto’s playing was full and brooding; presented with opportunities to employ vibrato, he did so sparingly but effectively. This movement also proved to be sparser in construction than the first. In several passages, Kuusisto played by himself or with only Colin Jacobsen in accompaniment. Their watchful interplay was expert.
In the third movement, which concentrated on turns, Kuusisto’s playing was fast and again folksy, something in the nature of a jig, but rendered in tense, dark fashion. He adroitly performed several dramatic slides. Above all, Kuusisto’s bow hand and arm were exceptional: despite the scratchiness of the movement, his bowing was strikingly calibrated.
Shrink’s defining characteristic was its frequent lack of rhythmic coherence—the solo violin’s rhythm was consistently detached from that of the all-string accompaniment. The piece also employed substantial tonal dissonance, producing a kaleidoscopic effect. I found it an invigorating, if somewhat eerie, work.
The performance of Shrink successfully exhibited Kuusisto, or rather the technical excellence of his nimble fingers and vigorous bow. Certainly, the work made and will continue to make an appealing technical exercise for the Finnish violinist. Kuusisto considers Shrink the “greatest musical gift [he’s] ever been handed,” and I therefore wonder whether many other violinists will dare to appropriate the gift.
I have twice used “folksy” to describe Kuusisto’s playing, and I think he would agree with the assessment. (In pre-concert remarks he called himself a “fiddle player.”) For their part, Eric and Colin Jacobsen, who double as The Knights’ artistic directors, seized upon this “folk” element to program the remainder of the concert.
Next came Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, a ballet by origin but orchestral suite by renown, which won Copland a Pulitzer Prize. The Knights’ rendition suggested reverence from the outset: the winds alternated gracefully, and the strings entered with vibrancy, a quality necessary for any performance of this great work. It is to The Knights’ credit that they maintained energy throughout, paying particular heed to dynamics and melody lines.
The group thoughtfully realized Copland’s blending of styles and his evocations of American folk music, especially in the “Simple Gifts” portion of the work, in which Copland presents the beautiful Shaker melody in several variations. The Knights achieved a warm sound that was nicely layered.
The last item on the program, A Shadow Under Every Light, was an oddity, but it piqued my interest. Composed by Colin Jacobsen, the piece takes its melodies from Slovakian and Moravian folk songs that the Czech composer Leoš Janáček collected in the late nineteenth century.
The work moved briskly among these melodies. Colin Jacobsen served as soloist, and he performed with aplomb—his playing was vigorous and his bow appropriately bouncy. To the dramatic appeals of the cellos and violas he made excited reply on the violin, and he led the ensemble into an enlivening dance before concluding slowly and harmoniously. I found the piece nothing short of splendid. Its only misstep was the inclusion of original singing that Janáček had recorded on a wax cylinder. The primitive recording’s quality was dreadful, and it distracted from the music being performed on stage.
In all, the July 28 concert at Caramoor was an engaging experience, presenting as it did a diverting slate of works. While the programming represented in part an effort to foreground a “folk” sensibility, the pieces presented were nonetheless diverse in their construction and tonal character. The program was distinguished and the playing spirited, casting the concert as a memorable addition to this summer’s classical circuit.