Hermann Keller: Second Piano Concerto and Chamber Music

SECOND PIANO CONCERT AND CHAMBER MUSIC

Hermann Keller is the prototype of an experimentalist who is as careful as he is restless and unleashes unimagined inventions, an improviser who knows how to let the famous spark fly. One of his favorite pastimes: the ex tempore on the grand piano, which he realizes in Madness Acts on the keys as well as in the body of the instrument. What can be intoned and denatured with the instrument comes into play. And there are a number of plus variants.

The most lasting are preparations, i.e. deformations of the piano sound with the help of various means - erasers, screws, mallets, cymbals. Working with cluster sticks, the fingernail, the fist, the elbow, yes, it seems, the whole body. He has never seen a grand piano prepared by Cage, says Keller, but of course he knows the relevant Cage photos. Henry Cowell, John Cage, Herman Keller. The composer and piano preparer Hans Rempel once said that this is a line of development. And he's right. For many years, Keller has constantly experimented and done real development work in the field of preparations.

Concerto for piano and 13 instrumentalists (2nd piano concerto)

The sound world of the concert is so far from the usual that one can only marvel. Primarily, Keller seeks to elicit the strangest things from the solo instrument. But the remaining 13 instruments are affected as well. Denaturation, alienation, escalation everywhere. Using techniques for preparing the grand piano, Keller combines quarter tones, eighth tones, all kinds of flageolet tones, and prepared harmonies with other instruments. The immanent world of rhythms and timbres is just as amazing.

Irregular African rhythms and rhythmic combinations, inspired by jazz and specially developed, find their way in. The piece shows how orders solidify, disintegrate and perish. – The six-movement work strikes an arch form. At the beginning there is an idyll, the harmonious, balanced, not unproblematic game of forces. In the end structural implosion, destruction, chaos.

The opening, »Im Garten Eden«, movement 1, builds this idyll. The piano is then prepared. The preparations sound pleasant and catch your ear. There is a subtle exchange between strings and prepared piano sounds. Woodwind and horn join the beauty. But the scenery ends uncertainly, questioningly.

In movement 2, "Scherzo I," the solo instrument dictates the rhythmic and tonal pulse of the movement. African rhythms are drive moments. Instruments and groups are gaining more and more space, expanding their playing horizon. Wind signals drive unexpectedly into the process. Then gradual dissolution of the original rhythm. Finally, free music-making without meter.

Movement 3, "On the earth full of cold wind," is raging with battle. He activates the energies of all players. The invoice is perforated. Short breaks in each part never allow a complete vertical of the 14 instruments. All the pulsations that Keller commands come into play. In rows, in the wildest way, piano clusters, realized with cluster bars on the keys, rattling repeated notes, string glissandi, eruptive interjections of tin and wood, plus percussion sweep through the fabrication. At the end of the movement, the violence is countered by the poetry of a short solo. Before it occurs, siren-like strings collide with percussion and yell radically in ff-note repetitions. Distant noises of a pedaled piano sound remain, before which the close, far-ranging bass clarinet part sings its tender song.

Movement 4, "Interrupted Elegy," briefly builds up memories of the past, only to shatter them immediately. Part 1, for example, consists of a few bars, as if Webern had composed it, and closes with a general pause. The solo instrument enlivens the scenery only through prepared single tones, also two tones, then plucked and scratched tones. At the same time, cantabile voices enter in a fugato-like manner. First the horn “sings”, then cello, oboe, violin, 2nd violin, bassoon, viola. But appearances are deceptive. Violent glissandi in trombone, strings and drums shatter all hope. In the final part, "Amok", the freest and most radical part, the soloist and instrumentalist - each against each - act out all their possibilities.

Movement 5, "Scherzo 2", sounds at first glance almost lively, rhythmically cheerful, dancing. Characteristic: He plays with tonality and thwarts it, counteracts harmonies with something ironic and grotesque. Triads are followed by their breaks in sharp gestures by the brass. The duet between piano and violin materializes in shimmering quarter-tone flageolets. At the end there are chorale-like, almost weeping brass attitudes.
Movement 6, "Abgesang," demonstrates beautiful appearances amidst rubble. With screws – it begins with glissandi and ends with soft but clear “noises of destruction” and an ff piano chord. It sounds like a hit with a musical fist.

Sonata for String Trio and Piano

In addition to the piano, the violin and viola have also been prepared with the help of preparation rods. They're stuck between the strings on the fretboard. The form of the sonata is primarily based on three movements. The corner movements are much faster, more mobile than the middle movement. Then topics are definitely exposed and processed. Soli, duets, trios, quartets live themselves out partly strictly technically, partly joyfully musically. Along the sustained octaves, the final movement also knows major - harmony - points which, briefly touched on by the pianist, immediately tip over again through damping, deformation. Conversely, a major sound grows out of dissonant structures in a flash. Such things refer to longings, memories.

Scene for Solo Trombone (Part 2)

This scene, part of a six-part trombone solo work, tests the trombone's possibilities, primarily in the rhythmic area. Various techniques come into play: making a sound by breathing in and out loudly or quietly, vocalizing and blowing at the same time, techniques for creating noise (air noise, blowing through the mouthpiece, etc.), glissando techniques. The pulse as well as the contour of the piece are uniform. This is what the rhythmic tones and noises generated through inhalation and exhalation processes stand for. However, the contour is repeatedly shot through. For example, through short fields of collapse realized through muted sounds. The meters change periodically: three halves, four quarters, three quarters. The dominant intervals are fourths, fifths, tritones and major sevenths. Their output levels change so that harmonic formations at least shine through.

Scenes for 1 violinist and 1 pianist

The piece was created in collaboration with the violinist Antje Messerschmidt. Its title, certainly meant ironically, designates the plural »In«, in which the singular »in« is disguised. Two music-making subjects are in a clinch. Clinches are known to know the subtlest to the roughest facets. A wide field. Keller has illuminated it in his own way, namely purely musically, which is extremely difficult. The six-part piece formulates an interplay between two individualists, each of whom, as they say, pull their Stiebel through. Which – the real spice of the piece – creates all sorts of comic correspondences. As expected, the sharpest collisions occur after initial scanning. While the pianist practices the wildest gestures, the violinist plays classical figures. The scenery is constantly changing. Part 4 depicts a kind of caning. The desperate violinist only knows how to answer the most extreme structural compressions with empty phrases. The end includes imitatively fought reflex actions, heavy sighs, and exhaustion. A loud piano note in the treble ends the dance.

Stefan Amzoll