Lasse Schwanenflügel Piasecki’s music is partly or fully based on concepts found in an audiovisual crossroads. Piasecki often seeks to combine the two forms of expression or to blur the borders between them. In several works he draws aspects of reality into the music, for instance by articulating the fragility in the concert situation.
In the clarinet concert "Hiding for Rosetta" ‘reality’ is the meeting between the audience’s expectations of a professional musician and the soloist’s lack of instrumental skills. A bassoonist plays the clarinet solo, and with this twist Piasecki inscribes a certain fragility into the piece.
In the opera "Falling Awake", Piasecki works with other elements of resistance, creating a sort of authenticity or reality: The countertenor sings while hanging on a rotating metal wheel, and after a dramatic assault, the child alto singer refuses to sing along. In the cello duo "Duet for One", two musicians play one cello, and one hears the sound from both parts of the string. To operate the instrument the musicians need to stand in a close embrace, and this intimate situation affects the experience of the music.
The piece for glass harp and glass vases, "Piece of Glass", revolves around the fragile character of the glass, and to emphasize this condition the soloist plays with hammers. The inevitable fact that the glass will break sooner or later, adds an experience of frailty and melancholy to the music.
Thus a sense of synergy between the abstract, scored music and the concrete reality, in which the music is performed, often arises in Piasecki’s pieces. In this way he emphasizes a sense of the real in the music. Furthermore the focus on the concrete reality of the music allows a hint of a visual narrative usually belonging to the more dramatic forms of expression.
Piasecki studied composition as part of the soloist programme at the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus under Simon Steen-Andersen. He has a Master in composition from The Royal Danish Academy of Music where he studied with Bent Sørensen and Hans Abrahamsen.
World famous ensembles such as the Arditti Quartet and Ensemble Intercontemporain have performed Piasecki’s music. His clarinet concert was awarded best music piece of 2014 by the Danish Arts Foundation.
