GrauSchumacher Piano Duo and SWR Experimentalstudio premier Ming Tsao’s Plus or Minus for two pianos and electronics on May 3 at Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik.
The 50–minute piece is a free realization of Stockhausen’s open score composition of the same name from 1963. It refers to all 7 pages of the open score and utilizes two layers of activity, each of which is represented by one piano.
The pianos themselves are transformed with transducer speakers placed throughout a piano’s chamber so that sound is essentially “spatialized” within. Single piano tones emerge and disappear continuously between transducer speakers that use the wood inside the piano as a vibrating source. Strange resonances emerge from the music of each performer that suggests seismic, often geological forces of activity that place human expression into its proper place as one aspect of a much more complex sound world.
For more information see Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik.
