David Salvage: Dreams of Love and Travel

Part musical travel log, part extended suite of stand alone and multi-movement works, composer and pianist David Salvage’s Dreams of Love and Travel extends upon the tradition of the solo piano character piece notably codified by Schumann, Brahms, Debussy, and Grieg. Salvage is American born but has lived in Bologna, Italy for the last several years. In the compositions featured on this album he turns his focus to destinations mostly within Europe (with a brief nod to his home state of Virginia), but also to internal journeys through the rich literary world of Proust. Salvage’s subtly ironic references to an aristocratic lineage associated both with the piano character piece as well as the Central European tradition show hints of his expatriate perspective.

The Crossing Bell at Genga Stazione paints a bucolic scene of a mountain train station in the Apennines with steady moto perpetuo quintuplets that alternate between block chords, a flowing melody, and swooping arpeggiated figures. The gentle undulation of Larici is inspired by a forest of conifers in the Western Alps, with light filtering delicately through the pines as they move in the breeze. The short Raffiche (“Gusts) accumulates energy as a moderate blast of wind might at a high altitude, with a rolling bass figure supporting an emerging melody of block chords and octaves in the top line.

The swells in Raffiche make for a smooth transition into the restless material that opens the seven movement suite, Moments from Proust. Inspired by Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, Salvage maps musical motifs onto the yearnings and self-conceptions of the protagonist Marcel. “Dreams of Travel and Love” balances Marcel’s youthful enthusiasm, captured by the initial Lisztian gesture, with reflective chordal commentary. A wry waltz provides the foundation for the second movement, “The Restaurant at Rivebelle,” a portrait of an proper Central European eating establishment through the eyes of a curious adolescent. The ticking of a watch is the idle fixation of “Saint Loup’s Watch;” the piece focuses on the internal dialogue behind the search for the source of the irritant, before revealing the innocuous repeated tick at the end of the movement with one repeated note. In “The Baron Laughs and Françoise Starts Again,” an aristocrat’s smug chuckle is captured by quickly alternating block chords, rumbling bass figures, and playful grace notes, while a sheepish housekeeper Françoise’s speaking patters are evoked through an rangy, dotted rhythm. Separated frrom the rest of the suite later in the recording’s program, the final three movements of the suite are presented in two tracks, the second of which elides two sections with an attacca transition. “Mon chéri Marcel” marries Chopin-esque rubato with Debussyian washes of harmonic color, capturing a touching moment between lovers Marcel and Albertine. Poignant, lilting chords open “O sole mio” as Marcel’s sense of alienation and malaise leaves him lingering behind as his mother heads to the train station for their trip to Venice. He hears street musicians singing the staple Neopolitan song, which Salvage sets with dramatic flair, and snaps out of his stupor to join her before the imminent departure. Salvage reprises the virtuosic flourishes from the opening movement in “Time Regained (The Garden Bell)”, as the narrative circles back to Marcel’s youth and closes with a gentle reverie.

Latemar Dream belongs to the travel log side of the album, a depiction of the summit of the mountain in the Dolomites featuring widely spread voices moving in ethereal contrary motion. 1610AM, Sailor’s Creek, Virginia is Salvage’s only glance back at the Americas in this collection, brooding snippets of the Battle Hymn of the Republic filtered through an oscillating two note figure in the middle range that captures the obscuring white noise of radio static. Barcarolle (Im Spreewald) takes us down Greater Berlin’s bucolic network of rivers that emerge from the Spree with lilting, watery figures that grow in grandeur, occasionally hinting at the complex history of the region beneath the charming surface with ominous bass passages underneath restless octave trills. Momentary Raptures does not specify its place of inspiration, instead its expansive voicings and brief pauses conjure the contemplation of travel itself, a fleeting mix of freedom and reflection of where one has been and where one is going, and where one belongs, both in embodied and spiritual ways.

Artists often seem to geolocate themselves with their stylistic choices, adopting the aesthetic values of where they reside. David Salvage’s personal journey as an American composer living in Northern Italy and with access to all the destinations in nearby Central Europe seems to have cultivated, either intentionally or by happenstance, a unique perspective on the European compositional tradition. Writing firmly within a tradition of programmatic, evocative character pieces, Salvage nevertheless has sufficient distance to lightly tweak some of their features, blending a reverence for the overall expressive ethos while sprinkling in subtle tinges of an outsider’s voice.

- Dan Lippel

Recorded August 1-3, 2024 at Oktaven Audio, Mount Vernon, NY

Recording engineer and session producer: Ryan Streber
Editing, mixing, and mastering: Ryan Streber
Editing assistant: Deanna Fielding

Liner notes: David Salvage

Portions of Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust translated by Lydia Davis and published by Penguin Books, 2002, are reprinted by permission of the publisher

Cover image: Portrait of La stazione di Genga-San Vittore Terme

Design: Marc Wolf, marcjwolf.com

Music publisher: Universal Edition, Vienna