Hauschka
FERNDORF CD13-08/LP 13-08

Hauschka’s second album for FatCat’s 130701 imprint offers a brilliant advance on 2007’s ‘Room To Expand’. Where the previous album comprised mostly solo recordings of Hauschka’s ‘prepared’ piano (with a few electronic and instrumental overdubs), ‘Ferndorf’ is a far more expansive and fully-realised album, with many of the tracks also featuring a string duo, enabling an increased solidity. More dynamic, its staccato stabbing rhythms are rendered increasingly rousing and emotive with these additional strings. Whilst he recordings still retain the shivers and tics (as by-products of) of the modified internal workings of the piano - alongside some sweet electronic touches – these are less central and instead what’s foregrounded is the melodic / rhythmic push and pull, and a developement towards more orchestrated music and notated compositions.

Having studied classical piano for ten years, Dusseldorf-based pianist / composer Volker Bertelmann’s work as Hauschka is based upon a playful exploration of the possibilities of the 'prepared' piano – an adventurous intervention into the preconceived idea of the piano as a pure-toned, perfected instrument simply waiting for a gifted virtuoso to play on it. His resulting tracks are vivid, unconventional pieces made in a spirit of playful research-enthusiasm. Prior to his involvement with FatCat, Hauschka released two albums on the Karaoke Kalk label - 'Substantial' (2004) and 'The Prepared Piano' (2005). Volker is also a member of Music A.M., a collaboration with Stefan Schneider (To Rococco Rot) and Luke Sutherland (Long Fin Killie); and of the electronic / club tracks duo Tonetraeger, his project with Torsten Mauss. Since ‘Room To Expand’, Hauschka’s cultural stock has increased considerably, based particularly around the revelation of his live performances, including rapturously received support tours in the USA with Múm, in Japan with Colleen, and a debut, sold-out London show with Max Richter. Where the previous album appeared almost in isolation, ‘Ferndorf’ arrives with a coherent extended campaign including increased live activity, a digital single, and a video triptych by Japanese animators Overture (responsible for Múm’s ‘Rhubarbidoo’ video).

The album title ‘Ferndorf’ (which translates as ‘distant village’) relates to the small, central German village set in a landscape of valleys and pine forests, in which Volker grew up. Living by the forest, with the freedom to fully fully experience nature, alongside his six brothers and sisters, Volker spent nearly the whole day – apart from school - outdoors. Growing older, it the village lost its charm and became the most boring place, enforcing a move to Cologne. Yet in the last couple of years he rediscovered that – alongside his experiences of travelling - everything he is playing today is based on his childhood experience in nature; that the source of his creativity derives from being at the right place in a certain time. ‘Ferndorf’ is thus his hymn to that place. All of these songs are named after very spontaneous impressions from that time, deliberately tinged with a  sense of Utopia. So, ‘BlueBicycle’ relates to Volker’s first bycicle, which became his door to the outer world; ‘Morgenrot’ to the window of his room which faced east and onto the red sky in summer mornings; ‘Rode Null’ is a mountain behind his parents house; ‘Freibad’  is an outdoor swimming pool in the forest, where you can go swimming in the moonlight; ‘Barfuss Durch Gras’ a song about running bearfoot through grass when it is wet; ‘Nadelwald’ is the dark needle wood which he sled-rode through in winter-time; ‘Alma’ is the name of Volker’s grandmother; ‘Neuschnee’ is the word for the new (powder) snow that falls in the morning on top of older layers; whilst ‘Weeks of Rain’ refers to Ferndorf’s famously rainy climate.

Recorded between October 2007 and March 2008, all of the tracks and string arrangements were composed and recorded by Hauschka. Purely improvised tracks like ‘Blue Bicycle’, ‘Morgenrot’, ‘Neuschnee’, ‘Alma’ and ‘Nadelwald’ were recorded with two cellists, Insa Schirmer and Donja Djember. The rest were recorded with overdubs fromSchirmer on Cello and Sabine Baron on violin, with additional assistance from Bernhard Voelz on trombone.

 

Hauschka
Room To Expand

Following previous releases by Set Fire To Flames, Sylvain Chauveau, and Max Richter, the stunning ?Room To Expand? album sees the addition of Hauschka, a new artist to FatCat?s 130701 imprint.

Hauschka is the alias of Dusseldorf?based pianist / composer Volker Bertelmann, whose work is based upon an exploration of the possibilities of the 'prepared' piano - a playfully disruptive intervention into the preconceived idea of the piano as a pure-toned, perfected instrument waiting for a gifted virtuoso to play on it. Instead, Volker explores and influences the outcome of his playing by getting right down inside the instrument - 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. These little modifications throw up an array of rustling, drumming, shivering, scraping, resonating sounds which either provide the focus / drive for a piece or hook the ear into an intriguing, slightly unusual frame. As ?Room To Expand? shows, his resulting tracks are composed both originally and charmingly, forming vivid, unconventional pieces made through what Volker terms a playful ?research-enthusiasm?.

Always assured and adventurous, the album flows beautifully, from the spritely, layered sprawl of the string-backed ?La Dilettante? to the ever-evolving growth of ?One Wish?; the minimalist repetition and percussive noise of ?Sweet Spring Come? and the sparse, delicate beauty of ?Kleine Dinge? or ?Old Man Playing Boules?. There?s a lovely sense of depth and balance to the album ? skipping through a range of moods, each piece is animated with its own particular character, its own weight and feel. Across the album?s 12 tracks, Volker is able to deploy both a forcefulness and a delicacy of touch; varies tempos; integrates other instruments when necessary; uses space and silence as well as bolder, more ectstatic outbursts. This is a beautiful, involving and evolving album, whose bold, accessible melodies, rhythms and structures immediately act as hooks, whilst a wealth of micro-detail rewards close-listening.

Rather than striving for any purist academic perfection, Volker?s playing appears as much informed by modern electronica or Indonesian gamelan as it is by any classical cannon. With the aid of his material interventions, the piano becomes as much a machine for generating rhythms as it does for melody. Here and there, tracks utilise additional, non-piano sounds such as synthesizer, drum machine, electric bass, or other acoustic instruments like vibraphone, strings or brass. His pieces may be seen as small rhythmic sound-vignettes or just quiet ballads which have their roots in east-asian harmonies; the minimalism of Reich, Glass, Nyman, etc.; in Satie or Ravel; in 20th Century composers like Henry Cowell, John Cage, Arvo Pa?Nrt, Steffen Schleiermacher, Frangis Ali-Sade, Edison Denissow or Philip Corner and other artists from radical '60s art grouping, Fluxus; as well as maverick popsters like Schra?Nger Otto.

With a growing emergence over the past couple of years of pianists working between the cracks in modern / classical / electronic genres ? the likes of Kenneth Kirschner, Max Richter, Julien Neto, Sylvain Chauveau, Goldmund, Library Tapes, etc. - this album is certainly timely and should place its author up there amongst the best of them.

Hauschka has previously released two albums on the Karaoke Kalk label - 'Substantial' (2004) and 'The Prepared Piano' (2005); and a 7", 'What A Day' (2005) on the Ear Sugar label. Besides working as Hauschka, Volker is a member of Music A.M., a collaboration with Stefan Schneider (To Rococco Rot) and Luke Sutherland (Long Fin Killie); and of the electronic / club tracks duo Tonetraeger, his project with Torsten Mauss. A remix album of tracks from ?The Prepared Piano? will be released on Karaoke Kalk in May 2007, including mixes from Nobukazu Takemura, Tarwater, Mira Calix, Frank Bretschneider, Vert, Wechsel Garland, Eglantine Gouzy, and Barbara Morgenstern.

HAUSCHKA The prepared piano
Karaokekalk cd31INFO

Like a child?
A masterpiece of crafts, the so called hammer-string-mechanics of the grand piano, makes a little hammer strike a tightened string. Its length, perimeter and tension have been designed with expert precision, they determine its very particular pitch. The well-constructed body of the grand piano is resounding the vibration: the sounding of a pure tone.
It is the result of a long tradition in constructing instruments, generations have been researching and working to perfect it.
Everything has been reached, you could state, a perfected instrument only waiting for a gifted virtuoso to play on it.
Alas, you could change the rules of the game, and that's just what's interesting Hauschka, not at all unexperienced himself.
Tracing back his roots, he's discovering Henry Cowell, the contemporary of Bartok's, who has been picking the strings of his piano as if was a zither. Californian Cowell has been influencing John Cage - who redefined the rules of piano sounds and -playing - with his own experiments. He's clamping bolts and screws in between the strings, little pieces of plastic or just rubber gums fulfilling the same function, all that creating further new sounds. Besides he's arranging odds and ends on the strings: plates, journals, pieces of metal - they all add new percussive elments to the sound.
What has been asserted a problem of the hammer-piano ever since it was invented - actually having to deal with a pure percussion instrument - is now redifined a possibility by Cage. With playful elegance he's handling the problem of percussion and is receiving new answers whose forms and sounds remind very much of indonesian Gamelan orchesters.
The rustling, drumming, harmonic withsounding of the various objects have been consequently inspiring a whole bunch of composers, amongst them Arvo Pärt, Steffen Schleiermacher, Frangis Ali-Sade, Edison Denissow or Philip Corner who has been co-founding the Fluxus obsession with the grand-piano. But it would be too easy to locate the playful in the serious, not to say academic. What Fluxus has constantly been trying to untermine others have been succeeding in with a whole different kind of verve: In the 50ies Fritz Schulz-Reichel becomes a celebrity under the name of "Schräger Otto" redefining his piano as "Beschwipste Drahtkommode" (tipsy chest of drawers (wired)). His modified Ragtime sounds make him a huge success in the U.S., his name appearing in a Grateful Dead track even. Since then modified piano-hammers or strings appear as an effect in various pop music tracks. In the early 80ies U.S.-hipsters like The Flying Lizards or The Waitresses are experimenting with metallic resp. distorted sounds not denying their avantgarde-references. It is then when the modified piano echoes its last resemblance of a mechanic synthesizer, a quality that has been marked out in all its possibilities by the easy-listening duo Ferrante & Teicher at the beginning of their career. At the end their record company had to clarify that they really used only two pianos to create their sound-systems.
Volker Bertelmann alias Hauschka is concentrating on just one piano and still there seems to be an entire orchestra accompanying him, too. Now and again he is allowing different sounds , the synthesizer makes its appearance, as it did already on his debut album, along with it go a drum computer or once an electric bass. But their sounds can easily be distinguished from those of the modified sound-body. Small rhythmic sound-vignettes or just quiet ballads who all have their roots in east-asian harmonies, e.g. minimal music, elaborate from the speakers. Sounds that you can't get tired of listening to enrichen every track with something incomprehensible, something special. So what is it that's sounding there? - Ideas, maybe spinning around Satie or Ravel, using the original qualities of the modified sound.
Hauschka, is finding the possibilities in the techniques and uses them. He's clamping vocal wedges of leather, felt or rubber between the strings, he's preparing the hammers with aluminium paper or rough films, he's placing crown corks on the strings, weaving guitar strings in, or pasting it off with gaffa. His resulting tracks are composed both originally and charmingly. Vivid, unconventional pieces made of playful research-enthusiasm. Is this the child in the musician? Sure - academically illuminated.
Oliver Tepel