Search - Helmut Lachenmann, Roland Keller :: Helmut Lachenmann: Piano Music - Roland Keller

Lachenmann's piano is an extended one of shaped beauty

04/10/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"You really need to hear all this piano music live, for Lachenmann's music is strictly dependent on timbral transformation. Take the "Guero" here where the pianist never strikes a note, Yes! no key is depressed,all we have are surface noises on the ivories(plastic now) clipping with the pianists fingernails the cracks of the keys. We also have fingernail glissandi. And Lachenmann knows how to shape this creative excess with skill. Even in a concert hall however the effect comes across as arbitrary for you really cannot hear all the minutiae Lachenmann has so painstakingly prepared. "Ein Kinderspiel" is more a success and another great example of noise, or extended sonorities. Here we have piano harmonics, that is when you silently depress the piano's keys opening up the strings for assault, exciting their overtones. The effect is disarming and beautiful. "Ein Kinderspiel" I suspect was an invitation to pursue writing in miniature form. These are like musical figurines and( not really for children to play), the kind we usually find on top of fireplace mantles or shadow-mirror boxes on walls. There is also an incessant repetition of these harmonics so to keep them floating in an surreal like space. Another requires the pianist to place a heavy object on the lower, the lowest on the piano of the tones (a) to (a)8ve, a brick would suffice. This allows then the pianist freedom of hand movement to pursue other regions of the piano. The earlier pieces here with more a traditional affinity we find a Lachenmann without a voice, perhaps Webern is hovering above the proceedings."