Around 2018 we heard Peripheries: Sound Portrait Belgrade by the talented pianist and composer Katharina Klement of Austria. This may have led to the arrival of some items sent from her back catalogue which landed in my box around that date, and to my eternal shame they have been languishing for many years, despite my encouraging words about her music. One of these is a DVD called 8∞ (EXTRAPLATTE EX-DVD 007), which was made with Nikolaus Gansterer and Josef Novotny. Working to Klement’s concept and plan, Novotny joined her in playing piano and live electronics, while Gansterer made the video component, which includes footage of him drawing in real time.
It’s something to do with the “deconstruction” of a grand piano in a highly cerebral manner; every part of the instrument is measured, documented, and analysed in some way, including capturing the sounds in digital storage, and having Nikolaus Gansterer make drawings of parts of the piano body in schematic form. He does this with exacting precision and attention to detail, even adding labels to the diagram which gradually fills up the screen in rich grey monotone. Meanwhile, Klement and the other pianist are working hard to present the 88 pitches of the piano keys in just about every possible way short of playing a piece of recognisable or relatable music. This may sound about as dry as an attic full of sycamore leaves in a dusty season, but there’s something oddly compelling about this very exact marriage of sound and image coming together over the course of 56 minutes. After the diagram-drawing part of the programme is completed, there are some dazzling close-up images of strings and vibrating objects all moving in time to the percussive-oscillating sounds; and the video treatments, resulting in deliciously degraded images, are thrilling. Released in 2005.
Earlier than the above is 13 Miniaturen (KALK CD 01), with a release date of 1996. These are short pieces for piano and tape, composed and recorded by Katharina Klement in 1993-1994. From what I can make out, it’s pretty much a tapework to be played back over 8 loudspeakers, where the prepared piano is only one part of the whole, lurking among the “recorded sounds in their original form”. It’s also something that varies slightly every time she performs it, depending on the concert hall and the arrangement of the loudspeakers. For this version in stereo, she opted to position the piano in the centre of the stereo image, while around the instrument the pre-recorded elements roll forth and resonate.
Although the music and concept may seem challenging, 13 Miniaturen is very direct and quite straightforward, presenting a very coherent and thought-through programmed composition in a very economical manner. Without doubt she had upped the ante on the achievements of Stockhausen and Aloys Kontarsky, who salute her from the grand Bosendorfer in the sky. Taut…precise…severe…just some of the words I’m clutching at as I savour this set, which may contain some elements which “narrate a continuing story”, according to the creator, who also declares the mixage of the record to be “a formula of its own intrinsic value”. I have no idea what this means, apart from the placement of the piano in the centre, but I like the aura of semi-scientific quality which this lends to the proceedings.
In an alternative universe, Katharina Klement would be given her own intrinsic field subtractor, but instead of causing disruption to sub-atomic particles with evil experiments, she would act as a benign force for the human race and somehow make the world whole again.