Günther Rabl
LANDSCHAFT (landscape)
LANDSCHAFT MIT PIANIST (landscape with pianoplayer)
tape composition + optional piano improvisation
| 1986 the new director of the Konzerthaus in Vienna wanted to organize some concerts
with contemporary music. Not familiar with the music production of today, he asked
Friedrich Gulda, what he should take. Gulda recommended me among some others. At that
time we didn't play together any more since a couple of years, but we stayed in contact
and Gulda knew most of my tape music. So he recommended STYX - my brandnew piece,
a symphonical monument for 4 speaker systems combined with a computer-synchronized
panorama projection of slides by Renate Porstendorfer. The organizer agreed, but there
was one small problem: STYX, 48 minutes long, was considered too short for a normal
concert program. On the other hand, I didn't want to combine it with earlier music
of mine. Gulda offered me to play a piano improvisation as an introduction,
but I was not satisfied with that solution either and after some days I suggested
to make a new piece together for piano and tape. This actually was the birth of LANDSCHAFT
MIT PIANIST and we started to work on it in spring 1986. My idea was to make a tape composition just out of piano sounds, an autonomous piece of music, which leaves space for an optional piano improvisation. At first we recorded 3 piano improvisations (recording engineer: Wolfgang Musil) as a basic material for my work. I did'nt give any instructions, but I suggested to take time and leave natural breaks, that makes it easier for me to cut up the material. Then I had six months to develope my part. I proposed a microtonal system of 60 steps per octave, split up into 3 scales, that do not contain the original piano notes. (A total cluster of it you can hear at the end of the piece in the wind-scene). Working with this material I got far away from the original piano-sound and gestures by means of analog transformations and cutups on tape. An acoustical landscape was resulting, which can stand by its own, but also gives room for a 'wandering' piano player. We performed LANDSCHAFT MIT PIANIST in the Konzerthaus Vienna, in December 1986, at first in the small hall, one week later in the big hall. It was quite a success. Three big loudspeakers, one for each channel of the tape, were surrounding Gulda's grand piano like another three instruments. Thus my part, though coming from tape, was not just an image of music (like a stereophonic recording would have been), but acoustic reality, that can opposit the big sound of a grand piano. There is a good recording of this concert. The piano part was recorded on seperate tracks, so it can be used for an acousmatic multi-channel reconstruction of this evening. A new mixdown on CD now is available. |
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The pure tape part, simply called LANDSCHAFT, can be performed
by its own and it is very versatile concerning loudspeaker setup. An impressive performance
was maybe the one in the big machine-hall of the Technical Museum in Vienna 1989.
I could install a speaker setup in 4 layers, from the floor up to the 3rd gallery,
and it was sounding really intensiv, although I had to play a stereo-mix for technical
reasons. copies of the 3-channel original or stereo-mix in high resolution on request. please ask for details. |
speaker setup for the performance of LANDSCHAFT, |
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