Music Review: Scott Wollschleger – ‘Lost Anthems’

Composer Scott Wollschleger has turned up a few times in my recent listening. I quite liked the piece of his that opens Saxifraga, New Thread Quartet’s recent album of music for saxophones. And to Isaac Shieh’s album of music for natural horn Wollschleger contributed a work I described as “div[ing] deepest into the natural horn’s microtonal possibilities. In other words, it will sound glaringly ‘out of tune’ to Western ears.” This composer does not shy from stretching the sonic possibilities of traditional acoustic instruments, and that goes double for Lost Anthems, a 25-minute work consisting of 15 short pieces – he calls them “anthems” – for viola (Leilehua Lanzilotti) and piano (David Kaplan).

Lanzilotti, who has worked with Wollschleger before, commissioned the work.

The buzzing, industrial-sounding first anthem, with its pounding but unsteady rhythm, creates an expectation that we are in for a sequence of unbeautiful “noise.” But although the score calls for prepared piano and extended viola techniques, the sound world that Wollschleger patiently creates contains many landscapes.

We next hear deep groans from the viola over soft piano chords, giving way to percussive pounding on the piano, including on the keyboard’s highest notes, where tone is almost impossible to discern, together with high harmonic sighs. These figures alternate with the viola vigorously speed-sawing triplets, soon joined by softer piano chords that create an airy atmosphere. We’re at quite a distance now from the industrial.

Dissonant piano chords hop from low to high with high squeals from the viola, gravitating to something else and then something else again. A sequence of clinking sounds recapitulates the idea of machinery, but then harmonic musicality returns in a way that’s actually pretty. Through preparing the piano, Kaplan achieves sounds far outside the usual pianistic realm. It can almost sound like a small ensemble is present rather than a mere duo.

“Lost Anthems” feels something like a suite, something like a survey, but isn’t quite either. Slow tempos and open-ended rhythms predominate, producing at times a soothing effect. That’s in spite of the scratchiness and percussiveness of some of the sounds. In the final minutes Lanzilotti somehow draws from the viola a hollow, shakuhachi-like tone. The two instruments settle on a handful of notes defining a restful on-the-fly mode as the final anthem fades away.

I say soothing, but not meditative, as each segment lasts only a few minutes at most, so you’re always anticipating what the next anthem will sound like. Still, each makes its point. The composer writes that each section is “a melodic, song-like texture in search of itself,” hence the title “Lost Anthems.” That may be so, but cumulatively they sound confident to me, products of a creativity that maintains a distinct voice even as it explores.

Lost Anthems is out now and available at Bandcamp.