Willows
Music by Vaughan Williams, Caroline Shaw, Ellen Reid, and Traditional/Sam Amidon
Pekka Kuusisto, violin; Sam Amidon, folksinger; Norwegian Chamber Orchestra
Platoon PLAT29192 (reviewed in stereo as 24/96 WAV files). 2026. Jørn Pedersen, prod., mastering; Åsgeir Grong, eng.
Performance *****
Sonics **** The last time my head turned when a recording received "Best of Month" notice from several magazines was in 2023, when Warner released Antonio Pappano's Turandot. The time before that was 26 years ago when Sony released pianist Murray Perahia's spiritually transcendent take on J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations. Since 2023, no universally feted recording has struck me as more novel, compelling, and profound than its disparate parts might suggest—until Willows, from 49-year-old Finnish violinist and contemporary music champion Pekka Kuusisto. Named for a tree that shimmers all the time—"light through a willow never stands still," Kuusisto writes in the liner notes—Willows is an intimate and moving testimony of strength amidst loss. Kuusisto recorded the opening work, Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending, in the spring of 2022 while his mother was in hospice. The day after he'd finished recording it, she died. Less than two months later, Kuusisto lost his brother, composer/conductor/violinist Jaakko Kuusisto. The surviving Kuusisto returned to the Oslo Opera House Studio three years later to record the remainder of the album—shortly after his father died.
Despite that devastating string of deaths, there is nothing morbid about Willows. Rather, the album abounds with freshness. Even Vaughan Williams's 112-year-old Lark sounds new. Inspired by George Meredith's quasi-idyllic poem of transcendence, Vaughan Williams composed what became his signature work shortly before he began to witness unspeakable suffering as a stretcher-bearing member of the British ambulance corps during World War I.
How many times have you heard The Lark Ascending performed by infinitely sweet-sounding, high-soaring violinists? Supported by orchestras committed to producing the most serenely angelic, lyrically pure sounds on the planet, those interpretations reflect nary a trace of the suffering that was soon to engulf much of Vaughan Williams's world. Kuusisto's take has little in common with those; his is far grittier, beginning with his Stradivarius played so lightly that its voice barely escapes a "breathy" nest of bow hairs on strings. Throughout the 16-minute, 19-second performance, Kuusisto seems more interested in Vaughan Williams's melancholic longing for an era on the verge of passing than with beauty for beauty's sake. The performance is gorgeous, yet it speaks as much to the angst of today as to the beauty of the distant past.
Unfettered sorrow surfaces only once on the album, in Ellen Reid's Desiderium. This under–six-minute solo violin work, whose title signifies "an ardent desire or longing/a feeling of loss or grief for something lost," is dedicated to his late brother and was commissioned for one of Kuusisto's performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The alarming slashes with which the music begins evoke images of someone hit so fast by one thing after the other that they cannot control the onslaught. As in The Lark Ascending, recording engineer Åsgeir Grong's close-miking of Kuusisto's violin magnifies the captivating, slightly disorienting sound of bow hairs on strings, especially during softly played, low-pitched passages.
Caroline Shaw's five-part Plan & Elevation, which she arranged for strings with Ben Murphy, shares some of the innocence that comes to the fore in Lark. Birthed during Shaw's travels, when she tends to sit in silence and draw buildings, each of its five sections is named for elements of what I imagine to be buildings' formal gardens.
As with so much of Shaw's work, Plan & Elevation possesses a barebones simplicity that speaks to something greater than its melodies seem to address. In the opening part, "The Ellipse," simple musical patterns repeat as they subtly change and flow one into the other. The third part, "The Herbaceous Border," is touching, with dynamic peaks ceding to quiet passages that hint at something unexpectedly profound just out of reach. On first listen, the final section, "The Beech Tree," invoked images of a group of people who have gathered to light a candle in the darkness. From very loud to very soft and simple, this gorgeous music seems typically Shaw, similar in concept to other refreshingly imaginative works.
With more than a touch of genius, Willows ends with Bernard Rofe's orchestral adaptation of Nico Muhly's arrangement of Vermont folk singer Sam Amidon's collection of six traditional American songs. The repetition in the first song, "Weeping Mary," seems of a piece with the repetition in Shaw's work and the album's inherent sadness. "Kedron," distinguished by a compellingly ambient recording technique that will appeal especially to folks into Dolby Atmos, addresses the thorny subject of migration, while "How Come That Blood" and "Way Go, Lily" resonate with violence and defiance. Thus in Willows doth the old become once again new.
The final song, "Wedding Dress," seems to celebrate hope and innocence—yet when Amidon sings "Oh, she wouldn't say yes, she wouldn't say no / All she'd do is sit and sew," the lyrics speak of feelings unexpressed. As the extended orchestra repeats the same tune over and over, the eternal mysteries of love remain concealed beneath the colors of a wedding dress and the repetitive elements of an early American round. Muhly's brilliant response to deceptively simple material, enhanced by Amidon's in-the-moment awareness of each song's universality, shares common ground with English composer Benjamin Britten's very different arrangements of English folk songs.—Jason Victor Serinus
Music by Vaughan Williams, Caroline Shaw, Ellen Reid, and Traditional/Sam Amidon
Pekka Kuusisto, violin; Sam Amidon, folksinger; Norwegian Chamber Orchestra
Platoon PLAT29192 (reviewed in stereo as 24/96 WAV files). 2026. Jørn Pedersen, prod., mastering; Åsgeir Grong, eng.
Performance *****
Sonics **** The last time my head turned when a recording received "Best of Month" notice from several magazines was in 2023, when Warner released Antonio Pappano's Turandot. The time before that was 26 years ago when Sony released pianist Murray Perahia's spiritually transcendent take on J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations. Since 2023, no universally feted recording has struck me as more novel, compelling, and profound than its disparate parts might suggest—until Willows, from 49-year-old Finnish violinist and contemporary music champion Pekka Kuusisto. Named for a tree that shimmers all the time—"light through a willow never stands still," Kuusisto writes in the liner notes—Willows is an intimate and moving testimony of strength amidst loss. Kuusisto recorded the opening work, Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending, in the spring of 2022 while his mother was in hospice. The day after he'd finished recording it, she died. Less than two months later, Kuusisto lost his brother, composer/conductor/violinist Jaakko Kuusisto. The surviving Kuusisto returned to the Oslo Opera House Studio three years later to record the remainder of the album—shortly after his father died.
