Miranda Cuckson / Blair McMillen CARTER SESSIONS ECKARDT

Violinist Miranda Cuckson and pianist Blair McMillen have already proven themselves an estimable duo for works by American Modernists such as Shapey and Martino. Their latest outing features Elliott Carter’s Duo for Violin and Piano (1973), a formidable piece written in the midst of Carter’s most compositionally rigorous period. And while the twosome emphasize the brittle, cutoff phrases that frequently appear in the work, they also do a deft job of pointing up the places in which violin lines melt into the resonance of piano chords (and viceversa). Thus, theirs is a rendition that juxtaposes rigor and grace, violence and gentleness; this versatility makes it one of my favorite outings with this piece I’ve thus far heard.

Composed in 1953, Sonata for solo violin is one of Roger Sessions’ first large-scale attempts at 12-tone composition. Clocking in at over thirty minutes, it is a bear of a piece, demanding both virtuosity and considerable thoughtfulness from the violinist to bring it off: Cuckson has both in spades. I particularly enjoy her traversal of the work’s last movement, a brisk “Alla Marcia” with incendiary passagework and double stops aplenty. Cuckson brings laser beam accuracy to the numerous tricky to tune passages.

Jason Eckardt wrote Strömkarl to complement the other pieces on this recording. It is based upon a Northern European legend of violin playing sprites who took up residence near waterfalls; depending on the rendering of the story, either charming passersby with music or leading them to drown. Eckardt captures this mischievous ambiguity with pixellated altissimo violin writing and brittle pizzicati; the piano is also given an angularly terse role to play. My money is on Eckardt’s image of the sprite being a wicked little beastie, but either way the piece is vividly characterful and a real workout for the performances; one they assay handily. (Christian B. Carey)