Mannes Faculty Recital: Miranda Cuckson

Yesterday evening's violin recital by Mannes faculty member Miranda Cuckson and pianist Yegor Shevtsov, two extremely accomplished musicians, was a well balanced program of classic and contemporary works.

The first half began with the Sonate pour violon et piano (1917) by Claude Debussy.  This was the last work Debussy composed, one of an intended series of six sonatas of which only three had been completed by the time of his death in 1918.  An interesting note in the program states:

"It is thought that at the time of writing, Debussy was under medication which caused to [sic] him to feel dizzy - precipitating the swirling, giddy rhythms and gestures of the piece."

This was followed by Sonata (1996) by Steven Mackey who began to compose concert music while still living in northern California and playing electric guitar.  He is now chair of the Music Department at Princeton University.  The sonata is determinedly modernist and demanding.  Of this work, the composer writes:

"There are two features which deserve special mention.  First, the violin part makes occasional use of microtones - notes in between the familiar equal tempered tones.  Second, the two movements are highly asymmetrical.  The first is about two minutes long and the second is closer to 18 minutes."

The second half began with Fantasy-Variations (1962) by Donald Martino for solo violin. This was a complex work which contained every possible difficulty to test the musicianship of the performer.  The composer himself was a clarinetist who played as a jazz musician in New York City before taking professorships at several Ivy League universities.

The final piece on the program was the Sonata in C minor, Op. 30, No. 2 (1802) by Ludwig van Beethoven.  The sonata was written at roughly the same time as the Second Symphony and the ballet The Creatures of Prometheus.  Composed the same year Beethoven, in a letter to his brothers, set forth the famous Heiligenstadt Testament in which he recorded his suicidal thoughts on learning of his impending deafness, the work anticipates the "heroic" works of the composer's middle period in its powerfully emotional tone.

Miranda Cuckson is a graduate of the Juilliard School where she studied under Robert Mann, Dorothy DeLay, Felix Galimir, and Shirley Givens.  In addition, she studied chamber music with Fred Sherry and members of the Juilliard String Quartet.  She is also the founder and artistic director of the non-profit organization Nunc.

Yegor Shevtsov is from the Lviv in the Ukraine where he studied both piano and dance. Later he obtained a degree in economics while a George Soros International Scholar.  After having moved to New York, he earned a DMA from the Manhattan School of Music where he is now a faculty member.