Jaakko Kuusisto is one of those ‘triple threat’ musicians. Accomplished as a violinist, conductor and composer, he has received numerous accolades in his native Finland and around the world. His recordings have mostly featured him as performer or conductor, however this most recent release focuses on the Finnish maestro’s chamber works, performed by a catalogue of exemplary Finnish musos, including Kuusisto himself.

Much of the music adopts a language evocative of the early 20th century. Play III sounds like a lost Bartók string quartet, while Valo for piano and violin makes extensive (crossing into exhausted) use of the whole-tone scale in its harmonic and melodic progressions – a favourite device of the so-called musical ‘impressionists’. An ornamented transfiguration of the opening bassoon solo in Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring becomes an effective source of material for much of Loisto, also for piano and violin.

Play III is a bold opening to the disc. The rich, robust sound of quartet Meta4 sets a strong tone on an album featuring expert musicianship from all featured performers. Kuusisto’s own performances in the two works for violin with piano, and in the central work, Play II, are incredibly powerful, his robust and expressive tone matching with both pianists. Play II actually is a notable compositional achievement, receiving a full-throttled reading by Kuusisto, violist Riitta-Liisa Ristiluoma, cellist Jan-Erik Gustafsson, and pianist Heini Kärkkäinen .

Stylistically, these first four works on the programme raise a question about Kuusisto’s compositional language and whether he successfully transcends the early 20th-century vocabulary or is too stuck recreating music from a bygone time (Play II features probably the most remarkable sonorities). The plot thickens with the final work on this album – the piano solo, Jurmo. Kuusisto in this work is channelling the American minimalists of the later 20th century, with cool, modal ripplings and wanderings, which sound like a total refresher at the end of the string-dominated album.

The stylistic departure of this final work – the most recent in the programme – feels like a door opening at the end of the disc, rather than closing, and asks the listener to focus not so much on the language Kuusisto adopts, but how he’s using it. Tension, hiatus and resolution are all beautifully and sensitively crafted in all of this music. These are performances certain to please, for their approach to lyricism and expression, as well as their dramatic flair.

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