“Kuusisto is faultless in this premiere recording.”
Pekka Kuusisto’s album First Light, performed by the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, received an outstanding review in BBC Music Magazine.
Performed here by the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra (NCO), Shrink – Muhly’s 2019 concerto for violin and string orchestra – sets itself fascinating harmonic parameters as each of the three movements focus on intervals of decreasing size. ‘Ninths’ sees Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto sail across choppy, fragmented melodies. Anxiety gives way to ambivalence in ‘Sixths’, which initially brings a slower pace and quieter texture, developing into the quasi-cadenza that opens ‘Turns’, a twitchy movement based around unisons and fourths. Kuusisto, a long-time collaborator of Muhly’s and the work’s dedicatee, is faultless in this premiere recording.
Bård Gundersen
