World premiere: March 15, 2016 MetArtsLive, The Met Breuer, NY; Miranda Cuckson, violin
Review
“In the lineage of Roger Sessions’s Sonata for Solo Violin and Donald Martino’s Fantasy-Variations is Karchin’s Dark Mountains/Distant Lights (2016). Inspired by the Watchung Mountains near the composer’s home in New Jersey, the piece plays with perceptions of near and far; Karchin even illustrates in music how images fleetingly appear, only to disappear again. This is a transfixing performance from Cuckson.