4 acousmatic variations on Sonata 106 “Hammerklavier” by Ludwig van Beethoven
for piano electronically processed in surround

Prelude to the Allegro

Prelude to the Adagio

Postlude to the Scherzo

Interlude in the Fugue

the pieces will be performed at the same time as the complete performance of Beethoven’s sonata.
The first electroacoustic piece is performed before the first movement of the sonata. the second piece after the first  beat, the third piece after the third beat and the last in a rest at bar 250 of the fugue. At the end of the variation the fugue resumes.

premiere
Brussels, 4 June 2024 at 7pm
European Parliament – Parlamentarium
Cultural Events in Citizen’ Garden
Season 2024 – Spring

The pieces use exclusively sequences taken from the performance of the sonata performed by Francesco Prode.

Can Beethoven be compared to electroacoustic music today? This is the first thought that led us to imagine this concert.

The solution can also be trivial, just place a Beethoven piece and any electronic piece together and that’s it! But we wanted to create a deeper relationship, a concert that truly united two genres of music, one present and one past, we wanted one to flow from the other, that music created today, with today’s means, would derive from that past that we all consider glorious but, “precisely” past, no longer belonging to our time. And we also wanted to present sonata 106, a work considered one of the giants in the history of music, as if it were an artefact from the past which, brought back to today, becomes a modern monument, an Ara Pacis of Music in a new sonic and visual space.

We won’t say whether we succeeded or not, the concert will reveal it. A concert that materializes in the present, and contains all the modalities of the present: immersive sound, in which spectators are not in front of a sound, but are “inside” the sound.