Kreisleriana Reviews
The Washington Post
“No one likes to be labeled, composers least of all. In a post-concert conversation, Meltzer rejected the idea that his music was ‘post-minimalist,” listing Webern, Berio, Ligeti and Adams as among his influences. The piece commissioned from him by the [Library of Congress] for the anniversary, Kreisleriana, revealed other appealing ideas, especially the Doppler-like effect of buzzing tremolos.”
The New York Times
The 25 Best Classical Music Tracks of 2018
Listen to the next-to-last track on this recording of recent works by Mr. Meltzer and see if you don’t want to hear the entire album. It’s from his “Kreisleriana,” brilliantly crafted yet elusive music that seems at once playful, dangerous, waltzing and jumpy.
The San Francisco Chronicle
“[V]iolinist Miranda Cuckson and pianist Blair McMillen team up for the irresistibly witty duet ‘Kreisleriana.’”
Voix des Arts
Composed in fulfillment of a commission by the Library of Congress for a work to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the death of celebrated Austrian violinist Fritz Kreisler (1875 – 1962), Meltzer’s Kreisleriana pays homage both to Kreisler and to the music that he espoused. Organized in six movements, the piece might be described as a series of variations on a theme of virtuosity. Kreisler studied with Bruckner, Delibes, and Massenet in the course of an education that exposed him to virtually every trend in composing for the violin and gave him technical assurance sufficient to write his own pieces and successfully masquerade them as works by renowned composers.
Meltzer’s music traverses a broad spectrum of musical influences, but his own voice remains audible, especially in the inimitably innovative development of thematic material. The performance of Kreisleriana by violinist Miranda Cuckson and pianist Blain McMillen is a whirlwind of technical wizardry of which Kreisler would be proud, but there is depth in this music greater than virtuosity alone can infiltrate. Cuckson never attempts to mimic Kreisler’s singular style of playing: rather, she plays Meltzer’s music with her own impassioned phrasing, which McMillen supports with pianism of sensitivity and suavity. Kreisleriana does not attempt to be an Enigma-esque musical portrait of its subject. If Meltzer tasked himself with composing music that reimagines Kreisler’s artistry from a Twenty-First-Century perspective, he succeeded. In this performance, Cuckson and McMillen succeed in playing Meltzer’s music as Kreisler played Beethoven’s.
Opera News
“Kreisleriana (2012, 2014), a work for violin and piano, was written to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the violin virtuoso Fritz Kreisler. At the premiere, Miranda Cuckson performed it on Kreisler’s Guarneri violin. (The title also evokes Robert Schumann’s piano masterpiece of the same title.) Meltzer utilized minute aspects of Schumann’s piece to inform the structural underpinnings of his six movements without directly quoting it. Kreisleriana is energetic, convincingly rendered here by Cuckson and pianist Blair McMillen, who also performed the world premiere.
“Aqua (2011) is a vibrant string quartet, whose structural inspiration came from Aqua Tower, one of Chicago’s most striking skyscrapers. Meltzer mirrors the tower’s undulating surface with vivid, whirling music, alternated with slower, dramatic moments. It’s well played by the Avalon Quartet, though marred in a couple of spots by the vocalizing of one of the players. Why can’t some string players and keyboardists (such as Glenn Gould) control this distracting tendency?”
New Music Buff
The second chamber work is a piece written for the 50th anniversary of the death of legendary violinist Fritz Kreisler. As it happens the Library of Congress, who commissioned the piece, owns Kreisler’s Guarneri violin and it is they who commissioned this work. Miranda Cuckson does the honors on violin ably accompanied by the trustworthy Blair McMillen. To be sure some of Kreisler’s style is used here but this work, “Kreisleriana” (2012) comes across as more than an homage, more a work informed by Kreisler. It’s a really entertaining piece too.
Fanfare
“Kreisleriana (2012/14) has no connection to Schumann. Rather it’s a tribute to Fritz K., part of a Library of Congress commission. I’ve mentioned before that the clarity of Meltzer’s writing has connection to Stravinsky, and I sense that here, but also a tie to Copland. This work for violin and piano has a consistent freshness (I particularly love the sound of a section all based on the interval of the perfect fifth, yet wandering chromatically so it’s impossible to pin down an easy harmonic center). It’s an imaginatively conceived form, which somehow arrives where it started, without the listener knowing why it feels so ‘right’.”
Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review
The final piece is a nod to the violin brilliance of Fritz Kreisler in the violin-piano “Kreisleriana.” It has an elemental primal quality in spite of its sophistication. We do not get some kind of pastiche of Kreisler evocations so much as a very forward moving original take on it all, and so we are very much on new ground. Yet the violin virtuosity and lightness of being that characterizes Kreisler at his finest is to be heard and appreciated in a new sounding.
El Espectáculo Teatral
De las dieci-séis piezas que integran el álbum, puede que las seis tituladas Kreisleriana –compuestas en 2012 para conmemorar el quincuagésimo aniversario del fallecimiento del extraordinario violinista austriaco Fritz Kreisler, e interpretadas por la violi- nista Miranda Cuckson y el pianista Blair McMillen– sean las más hermo- sas, emocionantes y evocadoras, de un disco en el que todo lo es.
Of the sixteen tracks that comprise the album, perhaps the six from Kreisleriana—composed in 2012 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the extraordinary Austrian violinist Fritz Kreisler, and performed by the violinist Miranda Cuckson and the pianist Blair McMillen—are the most beautiful, exciting and evocative, on an album in which everything is.