The Well-Prepared Piano

Mathias Halvorsen (piano)
Johann Günther (producer)

with preparations by Michael Rauter, Peaches, Ingibjörg Friðriksdóttir, Laurent Chetouane, Jan Martin Gismervik, Black Cracker and Mathias Halvorsen.

The Well-Prepared Piano is a project where pianist Mathias Halvorsen performs The Well-Tempered Clavier by Johann Sebastian Bach on new, altered versions of the piano. These instruments are developed together with other musicians, composers and artists and each explores a different concepts and some pretty quirky ideas.

The Rubbers by Mathias Halvorsen
The first altered piano is an instrument where the sound changes with the shift of harmony. The idea is to represent in sound quality the unequal tuning systems of Bach’s time, where intervals would change depending on which key you were playing. The effect of this in Bach’s modulating music is that the further the piece travels away from its main key, the more “out of tune” the becomes. On this altered piano the intervals do not change, but instead the sound transforms. This brings back an aspect of baroque music which is normally lost when performed on the piano. It also introduces a whole new array of funky sounds to play with - which of course is never a bad thing. To achieve this change in sound, Mathias set out to systematically tie the piano strings together with rubber bands. Getting the right sound was not easy, and after many hours of failure he came up with a special knot that would affect the string in the right way and stay on even after hours of playing. We have named the knot “the Halvorsen Knot”.  

The Stick by Ingibjörg Friðriksdóttir
Next Mathias met up with composer Ingibjörg Friðriksdóttir in his apartment in Reykjavik. They started early in the morning, after having made two cups of nourishing coffee. Following the preliminary sharing of ideas, it soon became apparent that the main goal would be to bring the mechanical inner nature of the piano out into the open. After some intense artistic pondering with two heads firmly stuck inside the piano, several exciting options presented themselves. However a quick review showed most required extensive building and a quite insurmountable amount of construction work. This meant a new trip back to the kitchen for another cup of deliriously delicious coffee. It was at this point Ingibjörg opened a drawer at random and thus initiated the comprehensive Phase Two: everything from pots and pans to knives and lime squeezers tried and failed to bring the search any further.

But then she found the wooden skewers.

They both started building, probing and looking for the one, true link between the intestinal piano and the outside world. After hours of sticks flying everywhere the solution presented itself and the second piano preparation was born. In the end the result was a visually active preparation where the audience can see moving wood hard at work when the instrument is being played. The sound of sticks bumping together is beautifully reminiscent of old harpsichords and organs (which produce a not insignificant amount of side noises). The sticks also alter the pitch of the initial attack of the sound and it takes a second for the correct pitch to make its graceful appearance. This really makes this instrument come alive, with a voice quite unlike anything they had encountered before.

Harmonics and Ping Pongs by Michael Rauter
When Mathias asked Michael if he wanted to participate in the project, he at once had a great idea; to tune all keys on the entire instrument to one tone. Unfortunately, before they could move on this rather expensive thought, Android did the exact same thing for a commercial. So something new had to be concocted. Already during the car ride from the Keflavik airport Michael had another plan - to fill the entire piano with ping pong balls. So before reaching Mathias’ apartment they went by three sports shops and bought all ping pong balls available. But once tried on the piano, it quickly became apparent that the sound of a chattering ping pong does not go very well with the sound of a clean piano tone. The next few hours were spent developing a underlying preparation based on non - linear harmonics brought to life by Mathias special rubber knot developed for a previous preparation.

The result is a bright, tender instrument with added ornaments by randomly moving ping pongs. They sings beautiful when the piano is played carefully and shoots out of the piano if the touch goes too hard.