The most striking work on their program at the 92nd Street Y on Wednesday evening was Jennifer Higdon’s “String Poetic” (2006), a piece commissioned for Ms. Koh by a consortium that included the Y. The movements of Ms. Higdon’s score carry impressionistic titles — “Climb Jagged” and “Blue Hills of Mist,” for example — and her tonal but rugged style is suited to the imagery they suggest.
In both “Climb Jagged” and its mirror image, “Jagged Climb” (they are the first and last of the five movements), the violin line is athletic and often brash, with scampering figures and chordal shards to paint the picture (and, secondarily, test the technique).
The equally picturesque piano writing included sections in which Ms. Uchida was asked to create a plucked sound by reaching inside the piano to damp the strings while playing her line, with her other hand, on the keyboard. The more meditative and ethereal “Blue Hills of Mist” is surrounded by a dark, lyrical Nocturne and a perpetual motion movement, “Maze Mechanical.”
