Bearthoven: American Dream
Cantaloupe Music

Recordings by contemporary classical outfits often feature works by multiple composers; Bearthoven's American Dream, on the other hand, focuses exclusively on Scott Wollschleger's (b. 1980). Arriving two years after Trios, its debut Cantaloupe Music release, the group's second for the label is riveting, not only for the seemingly definitive readings pianist Karl Larson, double bassist Pat Swoboda, and percussionist Matt Evans give the three settings but also for the material's thematic resonance. As one might expect, literal and ironic readings of the title are both possible, with Wollschleger himself referencing feelings of “doom, optimism, hopelessness, and the sublime” engendered by the music and succinctly stating, “Much like a dream, these pieces weave an interconnected musical fabric of contradictory worlds.” Complementing his take, Larson describes the material as “a reflection of the contemporary American state of mind.”

Formed in 2013, Bearthoven brings a fierce commitment to the contemporary music realm, having commissioned over thirty new works during its six-year tenure. One of the more interesting details about American Dream is that not all trio members appear on its three pieces, with the opening number scored for solo piano and the closing one piano and percussion. Only the thirty-five-minute title work features all three players, fittingly so as it's the recording's literal and figurative centerpiece. The pieces aren't unrelated, however, with the two framing pieces also present within the title work alongside other “broken songs.”

Drawing for inspiration from the juxtaposition of the beautiful and the grotesque witnessed by the composer during a gas station stop in Meadville, Pennsylvania, Gas Station Canon Song references that experience but also by implication the majestic and the repellent qualities associated with other everyday spaces such as parking lots and convenience stores. Performed with supreme delicacy, Larson's rendering expresses heartfelt affection for such places in this haunting, two-and-a-half-minute overture.

The juxtapositions alluded to in that first setting are explored expansively in the title piece, whose distinctive sound design, which Wollschleger refers to as an “abstract musical landscape of fragmented songs” and which includes pitch pipes, vibraphone, water crotales, and vibrators, accounts for much of the recording's appeal. Supplementing the gas station are other staples of American road trips, motels and fairgrounds among them, all of them surfacing in the music as theoretical rest-stops along the route. One of the work's defining elements is a quasi-dissonant, buzzing noise that makes its first of many appearances moments into the performance, followed by a pitch-shifting bell tone whose three-note melody's paralleled by the piano. While Evans is hardly the lead and the others support, Bearthoven being very much an entity of equals, it's his unusual percussive arsenal that's responsible for much of the work's impact. That said, Larson and Swoboda execute their parts with equivalent degrees of conviction and attention to detail, all three fully committed to realizing the composer's vision. Pitched largely at a restrained level, their interactions prove mesmerizing as the work wends its patient way until culminating in a shimmering, vibrators-generated resolution. As ponderous as the work sometimes is, it's not without a whimsical side: Wollschleger alternates, for instance, between 7/4 and 11/4 metres at the beginning, the gesture a sideways nod to the 7-Eleven convenience store chain.

March 2019