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http://www.lafolia.com/archive/covell/covell200207piano.html |
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Burkhard SCHLOTHAUER: ab tasten (1995), three
pianos drumming (1998). Jongah Yoon
(piano); PianoInsideOut: Reinhold Friedl, Michael Iber, Yun Kyung Lee (pianos). Timescraper Music Publishing
EWR 0105 (http://www.timescraper.de/). |
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For many composers, the piano represents the
ultimate in tradition. Some of them react by avoiding the piano, while others
such as Burkhard Schlothauer try to find new ways to make music with it. Ab tasten ("from
the keyboard") is the first of Schlothauer’s
works to use sounds created by touching the piano’s keys (earlier ones
avoided the keyboard altogether). For almost 50 minutes — 50 minutes that
pass very quickly — varied chords are played one after another, separated by
vast stretches of silence. The chords are like the lines on graph paper, or
the little markers alongside |
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Sometimes the chords are actually a single note, and
sometimes pitches are prepared or muted inside the piano (with a soft object
like felt, a hard object like metal, or the indispensable fingertip or
fingernail). Sometimes strings are plucked. But most of the time, the damper
pedals are used so that one of the notes will be allowed to resonate longer
than any of the others. It’s the resonance and space between chords that gain
your focus, and when the next chord strikes, it seems a sudden interruption.
Fortunately, the extended decay of the chord comes quickly after the attack. |
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Occasionally a bare open fifth appears like a
beacon. Sometimes there is a sound that appears to get louder, as if the
string were being bowed or rubbed by hand (it also sounds a bit like the key
is rapidly struck while the string is severely muted). For the most part, the
work has a consistent dynamic, but infrequent louder chords are like camera
close-ups. |
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I have to admit I was immediately reminded of aural
skills classes in college, where the teacher would play a chord and we would
have to identify all of its pitches. But that thought was fleeting: The
varied damping and inside-the-piano techniques create chords that are
calming, sculptural, and very enjoyable. It really does deserve a good
listen. |
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Ab tasten
could
be called minimal, but the richness of its chords and decays is more like
Feldman’s late works with their extended developments of scant materials.
However, three pianos drumming is
minimal. Three matched Steinways play the same sound: A single low string has
been taped, the pianists strike the corresponding key,
and we hear a muffled knocking sound. The piano, one of man’s more inspired
technical achievements, has been emasculated into a simple and
primitive-sounding percussion instrument. |
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This work moves slowly. The three pianists play
their single "drum" together, pause about a second and a half, and
then play it again. But the crux of the piece is that the three drums do not
always sound together. Schlothauer requires subtle changes in the timing so
that one piano is usually just before the beat and another just after, and
just when you think there’s a pattern, there’s silence. The music stays slow
and quiet. In a lesser composer’s hands, such a work would inevitably grow
loud and fast. But Schlothauer has written something static, stuttering and
simple. Three pianos drumming clocks in at 14:38, and like ab tasten,
it also felt too short. But you can
always play it again. |