In the spirit of John Cage, Germany's Volker Bertelmann, who records under the moniker Hauschka, paints haunting regional landscapes through the inventive and playful finger-workings of his prepared piano thanks to a bevy of acoustic sonic distortion. A prepared piano, for anyone unfamiliar, is piano with objects placed atop or in between the strings or on the hammers themselves, or in some cases having some strings deliberately detuned, so that the piano produces an unusual and idiosyncratic effect. Volker takes this idea to the extreme and practically unloads a thrift store worth of bric-a-brac and gewgaws on his pianos, flourishing his music with a lush and hypnotic layering of sounds, touches and often mysterious wintry textures, so much so that listening to his records gives one the sensation that you're listening to a full company playing, complete with percussion and everything. He stepped into NPR's studios last week and gave a small performance, showing the process going into the preparation and then the ensuing result, which result Volker says he enjoys because, as I've always admired, it puts something in motion and creates something going on that is, as the composer and the pianist, beyond his control.
Ping pong balls, tic tac containers, paperclips, leather, necklaces, foil, shish kebab skewers, anything and everything is on the table and on or in the piano for Volker's performances. The result is a sort of celebration of aleatoric brio.
In addition to performing two more or less improvised pieces, for which his prepared piano methodologies seems naturally destined, Hauschka also played a piece from his most recent LP, Foreign Landscapes, entitled "Mount Hood." Beyond his latest output, I recommend: everything he's ever recorded. The dude is magical.
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