Violin Concerto (Procession) (2021)

the twenty-minute concerto is cast in five spellbinding movements, yielding to an aural ritual of compelling intensity. Mazzoli’s score is wrought of astounding sonorities, giving rise to the most fascinating instrumental dramaturgy.

Received with enthusiasm in Lahti, the Mazzoli concerto bears unusual intensity and directness, especially when performed with such remarkable dedication and craft. A game-changing musical experience, no less, the Nordic premiere was one for the books.

The score made striking, magical contrasts between spectral highest notes and lowest depth-charges, with surging portamenti between the two extremes.

The program’s molten core was the world premiere of Missy Mazzoli’s “Violin Concerto (Procession)," a work in five short (mostly conjoined) movements. Like Vaughan Williams, Mazzoli taps into and transforms a hymnal history — albeit with a more “messed-up” (her words) twist.

Composed over the course of 2021, the concerto’s themes are inspired by medieval rituals that emerged through the Plague… Over its 20-minute run, Mazzoli conjures penitential processions, “melting hymns,” spells cast over broken bones and a conclusory ascent to the heavens. 

Koh and Mazzoli have a decade of collaborative work behind them — including a short piece for “Alone Together” — and the “Violin Concerto” puts this long-brewed chemistry on full display. It’s an unsettling work that opens like a trapdoor, or the moment you fall asleep.

Koh didn’t ride atop the orchestra so much as engage in a prolonged tug-of-war with it — her solos tensing like a tendon within the body of the music. She attacked short solos as if she were sawing through a pipe; elsewhere she strung silvery threads through a dense fabric of dark strings and darting flutes. Her slow-burning centerpiece cadenza was a searing highlight of the evening.