Karl Larson – Scott Wollschleger: Dark Days (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 48:48 minutes | 758 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © New Focus Recordings
Composer Scott Wollschleger releases his second album with New Focus, Dark Days, chronicling solo piano repertoire written between 2007 and 2020 and featuring his longtime close collaborator, pianist Karl Larson. Aspects of style that are heard on his first album Soft Aberration are present again, but now filtered through the introspective immediacy of the solo piano medium, as we hear coloristic harmonies, a penchant for using displaced rhythms and repetition to subvert phrasing expectations, and an intuitively driven approach to form and structure.
The music of composer Scott Wollschleger has a distinctive profile that emerges clearly in solo piano music, making this a good choice for those interested in his music. Wollschleger combines several quite diverse influences from the past into a new and coherent whole. The composer is a synaesthete, and the first thing that strikes the listener here is the variety of colors he calls forth from the keyboard, beautifully brought out by his champion pianist, Karl Larson. Wollschleger’s treatment of the piano unmistakably brings to mind a Claude Debussy brought into the modern era. There’s also a slow-moving, repetitive quality suggesting the influence of the minimalists and perhaps of Morton Feldman. In terms of rhythm, however, Wollschleger is closer to high modernism, using devices such as proportional rhythm and generally an emphasis on the duration of notes rather than on pulse, which is there but elusive. In his transparent textures, these rhythmic devices come through clearly and interact in a wholly original way with the coloristic aspect of the composer’s music. Larson worked closely with Wollschleger over the several years in which these pieces took shape, and his readings may be regarded as definitive. A novel contemporary release rooted in long traditions and accessible to all.
Tracklist:
01. Wollschleger: Dark Days
02. Wollschleger: Tiny Oblivion
03. Wollschleger: Music Without Metaphor
04. Wollschleger: Blue Inscription
05. Wollschleger: Lyric-Fragment
06. Wollschleger: Brontal No. 2 “Holiday”
07. Wollschleger: Brontal No. 6
08. Wollschleger: Brontal No. 11 “I-80”
09. Wollschleger: Secret Machine No. 4
10. Wollschleger: Secret Machine No. 6
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