Hauschka is the captivating Düsseldorf-based pianist Volker Bertelmann. His music can be microscopic in detail and quietly entrancing, or widescreen and cinematic in scope and feel. Hauschka performs beautiful post-classical chamber works drawing on minimalism and laced with the spirit of Fluxus, bringing to mind the expansive open-endedness of The Necks, Nico Muhly’s post-minimalist compositions or Eric Satie’s sense of mischief.
Channeling the spirit of John Cage’s prepared piano, Hauschka opens up his instrument and playfully performs public operations on its innards using guitar strings, gaffer tape and other bits of junk in search of new colors and textures. The melodic and harmonic properties of the piano, so often dominant in piano music, are set against the homespun clicks, scrapes and rattles of the internal mechanisms when certain keys are played. Harnessing the percussive potential of the instrument and wrapping this around his keen melodic ear makes Hauschka an auteur of the ebonies, as well as an alchemist of the wood, string and metal.
“ingenious and exquisite” – The New York Times
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