INTRODUCTION

In the beginning : the piano

In the 1990’s, after completing my studies at the Conservatory and pursuing abroad, I had developed a rather extensive practise and knowledge of the classical piano repertoire. This included 20th Century and earlier music pieces. While remaining faithful to 18th and early 19th Century composers, somehow neglecting the Romantic period, I started specializing in the repertoire of the first half of the 20th Century. More specifically, I favoured Central European, Eastern European and Russian composers such as Anton Webern, Arnold Schönberg, Béla Bartók, Sergeï Prokofiev and their contemporaries. However, I progressively made frequent incursions in more recent repertoire when I had the occasion. The first serious contemporary piece I performed was Philippe Boesmans’s Sur Mi (1974) for two pianos, percussion and electric organ (four performers). The piano score was quite new to me and proposed a type of playing I had not yet encountered although it remained in the realm of classical piano. The next piece I performed was Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Klavierstück IX for piano (1954-1961) which again contained several advanced piano techniques and incredible novelties but remained in what I considered as the heritage of the first part of the 20th Century music writing. Many pieces followed by composers such as Stefan Wolpe, Elliott Carter but also living Belgian composers. I also started playing minimalist music, especially Morton Feldman, discovering a new concept of time in music.  All the pieces I played, some of which had been revolutionary in their time, were exclusively composed for piano in the great tradition of the instrument.

Kontakte : an extended piano

In the late 1990’s, Anthony Gonzalez, a friend of mine who was graduating from The Juilliard School as a percussionist, asked me to play with him for his final recital. He had chosen to perform Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Kontakte (1958-1960) for piano, percussion and tape. After practising this demanding score individually, we rehearsed for two weeks to prepare the performance. Afterward, I played Kontakte many times with various percussionists such as Gerrit Nulens and Miquel Bernat.

Kontakte was first conceived as a purely electronic music piece and was performed as such. It is considered groundbreaking in its genre, entirely handmade by the composer who had no computers at the time. Later on, Stockhausen believed that audiences would appreciate the piece better with live musicians. Instrumental accompaniment was therefore added to the tape. At first, this accompaniment was improvised. However, that did not satisfy the composer because musicians always seemed to react to the tape instead of playing with it. He finally decided to compose a complete piece for piano and percussion to be played with the tape. Kontakte can therefore be considered as electronic music with an accompaniment of piano and percussion.