Along with the likes of Max Richter, Ryan Teague and Peter Broderick, Düsseldorf-based pianist Volker Bertelmann (aka Hauschka) is part of a new strain of modern composers recontextualising classical music within a succinct, almost pop music format. Snowflakes and Carwrecks is Bertelmann’s follow-up to last year’s Ferndorf, an album that saw him expanding his sonic palette beyond prepared piano with the addition of strings and a more playful approach to composition.
The seven tracks on this EP were all recorded during the Ferndorf sessions, and bear much in common with that album. Bertelmann’s piano tends to have a sharp, staccato quality, which is offset by generous use of swelling cellos and violins. The spritely Tanz forms the record’s centrepiece, using every second of its nine-minute running time to evoke springtime visions of windswept meadows and slowly melting snow. At the other end of the Hauschka spectrum are tracks like Eisblume and Kindelsberg, subtle, melancholic explorations of (mostly) untreated piano that belie Bertelmann’s decade-long training on the instrument.
Bertelmann’s evolution as a composer is what’s on show here, rather than the ins-and-outs of his approach to the piano (as on 2005’s unambiguously-titled The Prepared Piano). Though simplicity is in many ways the key to Hauschka, there’s incredible depth to be explored in tracks like Hauberg (the disc’s undoubted highlight), which builds with glacial stillness to an affecting climax before ever-so-subtly retreating to whence it came.
Although technically a collection of outtakes, Snowflakes and Carwrecks shouldn’t be looked upon as such. It is, without exception, a beautifully moving record, and a worthy complement to Ferndorf.
Adam D Mills
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