Jennifer Koh

CD HotList
By Rick Anderson
January 7, 2019
original link

Saariaho X Koh

Jennifer Koh with various accompanists
Cedille (dist. Naxos)
CDR 90000 183
Rick’s Pick

For this album, violinist Jennifer Koh teams up with a shifting array of collaborators to perform chamber works by the celebrated Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. These works tread a careful line between the invitingly lyrical and the forbiddingly academic, offering plenty of structural complexity but also lots of accessible sonic beauty. Some pieces are spikier than others–the one-movement trio Light and Matter is particularly knotty–but all of them make powerful melodic as well as textural statements and coherently convey strong emotion as well as structural complexity. Light and Matter is presented here in its world-premiere recording, as is the violin/cello version of a brief piece titled Aure. Strongly recommended to all classical collections.

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