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07/18/2025
“East Meets West. Solo Guitar Works”
Ian Krouse: Roderick Usher’s “Phantasmion” (“Grand Sonata quasi una fantasia”), opus 25 – Trois Tableaux d’Andersen, opus 13: 2. “La Petite Fille aux allumettes” – Dror Yikro (“Hassidic Song”), opus 30
Ronald Pearl: Impromptu – My Name is Red – Four at III
Robert Trent (classical guitarist)
Recording: Evelyn and Mo Ostin Music Center, UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, Los Angeles, California (June 10‑11, 2019) and The Davis Performance Hall, Radford University, Radford, Virginia (July 25‑26, 2019) – 59’41
Naxos “American Classics” 8.559948 (Distributed by Naxos of America) – Booklet in English
The classical guitar has come in and out of fashion since its glory days in the early 1800s. It’s an instrument that many love for its harp‑like elegance, while others may have a cooler view. Fortunately, there are wizards who know the secrets of this instrument and none more knowledgeable and enthusiastic than Ronald Pearl and Ian Krouse, two eminent 20th/21st century American composers, and the renowned classical guitarist, Robert Trent.
The album is notable for its varied content and the exciting, often thrilling range of technical devices Trent uses both to entertain and explore the deep textures of his instrument. As composers who understand and appreciate the guitar, Pearl and Krouse present a variety of perspectives on musical culture. A touch of Chopin here, a smidge of Middle Eastern there: the influences melt into something original, a truly international American sound.
The album features six works for solo guitar. Listeners inured to short, breezy pieces for this instrument will be pleasantly surprised to encounter a large‑scale composition of striking complexity, as well as a four‑movement tone poem of expansive lyricism. The first is Krouse’s three‑movement Phantasmion, a grand sonata composed in 1990 and revised in 2009. The work was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s chilling short story, The Fall of the House of Usher, specifically the embedded song, “The Haunted Palace.” Fictional family patriarch Roderick Usher voices Poe’s lyrics while accompanying himself on the guitar.
Immersed in Krouse’s score, Trent weaves a musical web of intrigue, horror and despair, taking advantage of the solo guitar’s many overlooked properties to such an extent it often seems there are several different instruments playing in sequence or together.
The work is dedicated to Trent, and with good reason: the dedicatee’s performance illuminates Poe’s ghastly tale with voluptuous low‑tone passages, deliberately tinny phrases fluttering above, and vigorous strums and thumps on the soundboard. Trent effectively conveys what Poe called “wild improvisations” and “the fantastic character of the performance.” It’s almost as though Poe were foretelling this 21st century realization.
The next work in multiple movements is Pearl’s Four at III which refers to four pieces played with the capo—a pitch altering device—at the third fret. Though less than 10 minutes in length, this palette of nocturnes holds together smoothly, a series of dreamy reflections unified by intent. In this rendition, Venice is the point where East and West intersect. Streams of sweet melodies flow from Trent’s guitar, in wonderful tone colors, some of them almost flamenco in aspiration. In the final movement, “Night Bells,” Trent manages to transform his guitar into a reflection of the bells of the Campanile di San Marco. Or so it may seem to listeners caught up in this musical grand tour.
One of the selections most imbued with Eastern influence is Pearl’s My Name is Red, inspired by the novel of the same name by Orhan Pamuk, Nobel Laureate. Here, strings are provocatively tuned to foreign pitches, resulting in a sensuous lilt.
Excerpted from a larger work (Trois Tableaux d’Andersen) is Krouse’s “The Little Match Girl,” composed more than 20 years before the familiar David Lang choral work on the same poignant subject.
From Pearl’s brisk opening Impromptu to Krouse’s concluding Dror Yikro (Hassidic Song), “East Meets West” reveals a much‑loved instrument in a new light: original, many‑faceted and willing to take risks. The result is an hour of guitar playing that is simply breathtaking.
Linda Holt
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