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	Hauschka 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. 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. 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. 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 more info: www.hauschka-net.de