The whole idea of a ‘prepared piano’ sounds a bit preposterous, and not least a little pompous, but what do you expect of a man who has studied classical piano for ten years, played ‘rapturous’ support to Iceland’s off-kilter experimentalists, Múm and lives in one of those secluded and darkly animated forests more traditionally associated with Bjork videos and the Brothers Grimm.
So what is ‘prepared piano music’? Well it’s not the kind of thing your average Blue Peter presenter will whip from beneath the table to show you one they ‘finished earlier’, that’s for sure. Nor is it likely to earn you a badge. Hauschka describes it as ‘the adventurous intervention into the pre-conceived idea of the piano as a pure-toned, perfected instrument simply waiting for a gifted virtuoso to play on it’. Simply put; it’s a piano with someone playing on it. Not the most extraordinary of ideas once you strip away the fundamental excess of Hauschka description, but should you care to examine the exact and beautifully scientific nature of what’s really going on here, you’ll discover that what composer/pianist Victor Bertelmann means by a ‘prepared piano’ is actually your average upright with shitloads of stuff attached to it. Whether it’s clamping wedges of leather, felt or rubber between the strings; preparing the hammers with aluminium paper or rough films; placing crown corks on the strings, weaving guitar strings around the piano’s guts, or pasting them down with gaffa tape – Hauschka takes your common-or-garden ivories and transforms them into the cloud-tickling fingers of angels. It’s an ivory-trade with a difference: nobody gets hurt, nobody gets arrested and no animals get hurt during the making of the feature.
Recorded between October 2007 and March 2008, the tracks feature a magical ensemble of cellos, violins and polysyllabic rhythms all tenderly tapped out on the eccentrically treated strings of Hauschka’s old ‘joanna’. No guitars, no drums, no shouting, no singing, just a melancholy tapestry of gorgeous, extraneous sounds.
It’s not fairies living down at the bottom of your garden, it’s a German gentleman by the name of Victor Bertelmann.
Quite lovely.
HAUSCHKA – ‘FERNDORF’ – RELEASED 08/09/08