Pekka Kuusisto: Willows album review – luminous, innovative and penetrating | classical music

‘W“We don’t delete notes, we delete ketchup,” says Pekka Kuusisto. The Finnish conductor and violinist talks about Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending, a work so innately British that it regularly tops classical music popularity polls in the UK. However, Kuusisto’s Lark is no RVW-lite, but an honest and compelling account that returns the music to its essential roots in the English folk tradition. It begins with a whispered, breathy sound, then flutters and rises before disappearing into a world of spiritual calm.

The album, titled Willows and featuring the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, is in part a reflection on grief and loss: Ellen Reid’s Desiderium, a deep howl for solo violin, is dedicated to Kuusisto’s virtuoso brother Jaako, who died in 2022. Elsewhere, Caroline Shaw’s Plan & Elevation, an orchestral version of her 2015 string quartet, picks up the arboreal theme in a work that maps the Dumbarton Oaks estate In Washington, DC. Architecturally, the piece takes Mozart and Ravel as its guides in flashing lines that crisscross five diverse movements.

To complete the circle, Sam Amidon lends guitar, banjo and his signature vocals to six traditional American folk songs, arranged here by Nico Muhly. As an expression of faith, grief, ritual and resistance, they bring this innovative album to an honest end.

Stream it on Apple Music (above) or on Spotify