Miranda Cuckson: Világ
Urlicht AudioVisual

Világ, a Hungarian word meaning “world” or “illumination,” is an apt title choice for Miranda Cuckson's double-CD collection of unaccompanied violin performances. In featuring pieces by composers from Hungary, Iran, Canada, Germany, and Italy, the release is global in span. It's also illuminating, not only for its compositional diversity but for Cuckson's extraordinary playing. In featuring violin alone, her virtuosity, dexterity, and command of intonation and phrasing are on full display, and the performances mesmerize. She's performed throughout the globe and has played as a recital and concerto soloist at some of the world's most storied venues. Her recordings have featured performances of works by Ligeti, Glass, Schnittke, Lutoslawski, and Nono, and, an alumna of The Juilliard School, she teaches at the Mannes School of Music at New School University.

Her fourth Urlicht AudioVisual release couples works by Béla Bartók and Franco Donatoni with recording premieres of pieces by living composers Manfred Stahnke, Aida Shirazi, and Stewart Goodyear. Such a programme reflects her championing of contemporary works from Western and non-Western sources. Composed for Yehudi Menuhin, the towering Sonata for solo violin (1944) is one of Bartók's last pieces. Evoking Bach's solo violin sonatas and partitas, Bartók's advances through chaconne, fugue, aria, and presto parts. One is instantly captivated by the authority with which Cuckson executes the “Tempo di ciaccona,” her every spellbinding gesture thoughtfully considered. During the ten-minute performance, her playing alternates between lyrical voicings and undulating folk dance figures. Whereas the fugue that follows is disarming in its intensity, the austere “Melodia. Adagio” exudes loneliness and mystery in the slow lilt of its hushed, at times eerie expressions. By stark contrast, the concluding “Presto” pursues a careening, bumblebee-like flight whose folk allusions and dance rhythms return us to the village.

Its title alluding to the flickering of light and shade in a forest setting, Saniya (2019) is a four-movement work (with three intermezzi) by Shirazi, who emigrated from Iran to study in the United States and Europe and characterizes the work as aspiring “to capture changes in the white noise of the fluttering leaves in the breeze.” There are moments where echoes of her Iranian roots surface, which effectively distances Saniya from the kind of pastoral-tinged piece another composer might have created. As it advances through seven sections, the material seems to replicate the sensory experiences a hiker might have while exploring the nature setting. The impression forms of someone wandering alongside rapidly flowing streams, breathing in the pure country air, basking in the gentle breeze, and being dazzled by a constant flood of sunlit colour and texture.

As highly regarded as a pianist as composer, Goodyear wrote Solo – A Suite for Solo Violin last year for Cuckson. Goodyear's Canadian, but, as his mother is from Trinidad and his father was British, his writing sometimes incorporates some of the colours of Caribbean music. By his own description, the work constitutes a tour of his childhood and other experiences, such that its nimble, acrobatic “Waltz” and fiddle-inflected “Prelude” pay homage to the Canadian folk tradition, the effervescent “Dance” references Calypso, and the rhapsodic “Chant” and “Elegy” are through-composed, with the haunting latter an elegiac lament for the loss of life wrought by the pandemic.

Capra 4 (2013), the seven-part piece by German composer Stahnke, reflects his abiding interest in microtonal tuning possibilities. The Capra series, which began in 1987, takes its title from the physicist Fritjof Capra and combines spontaneity and pre-determined “rules,” the particular work performed by Cuckson grounded in unusual number combinations. Of all the album's five pieces, Capra 4 is the one, not surprisingly, most distinguished by arresting note clusters, its third part, “Reine Kleine Septen 7/4 Und Quarten,” which is based, naturally, on the number four and seven, a case in point. As ear-catching are “Oktaven Und 8/7 Sekunden,” which utilizes a scale idea from Indonesia whereby every step is close to the overtone proportion 8/7, and “Naturtonreihen,” which nods to Harry Partch concepts. However cryptic or mystifying such descriptions might look on paper, musically they engage directly and with immediacy

May 2023