Instrumentation Pno solo + 3.3.3.3/4.3.3.1/4perc/arpa/archi/live-elec/video
Category Orchestra
Publication year 2014
Catalogue no. B.0681
Duration 25 minutes
A multimedia reportage of the Piano Concerto can be found on the SWR website.
When I compose within a classical frame I wish to show the tradition in a radically new light. By sacrificing a concert grand I thematise the beauty of the destroyed and the unpolished. I bring the listener inside the ruined instrument to experience sounds which we normally don’t come close to.
Simon Steen-Andersen’s Piano Concerto received widespread recognition winning the special orchestra prize when it was premiered at the music festival Donaueschinger Musiktage in the fall of 2014. The work takes as its starting point the sound- and video recording of a grand piano falling onto a concrete floor from a height of 8 meters. From this Steen-Andersen composes an intricate dialogue between prerecorded audiovisual material and real-time musicians. The result is a spectacular genre-bending multimedia experience.
A multimedia reportage of the Piano Concerto can be found on the SWR website.
The piece received the prestigious Danish Carl Prisen in April 2015.
This is the only model that can currently be used for the piece. (Studiologic numa compact 2 and 2x won’t work.)
Sound:
• 4 ch output from 2 laptops on stage.
• Amplification (2 ch?) piano
• Stereo PA (preferably not floating too high)
• 2 speakers under/next to piano
• Small mixer at a suitable location in the hall for live mixing.
(Normal strategy: match sampler through local speakers with acoustic sound of piano, add a balanced mix if sampler and live pno through PA. If PA speakers are hanging high, we should have centers on the floor).
Monitor for soloist and conductor.
Video:
• 2 signals from laptops on stage:
• 1 going to a large projector for the big (the bigger the better!) screen behind and above the orchestra.
• 1 going to a small projector for the “custom screen” in front of the piano. This projector will in most cases have to stand in the audience space (short-throw lense) but can in some cases also be projected with a “tele” lense from behind/above the audience.
Custom screen:
Custom screen of wood, maybe thick cardboard could work too, cut after mask, painted with a projection friendly white (matte).
Orchestra needs stand lamps. Extra light/profiles for pianist and conductor (pianist and pno need to be lit without spilling light on the custom screen). All lights including stand lamps need to be black-out-able on cue from conductor.
Here also a number of photographs taken at a recent performance in Luxembourg, in which the placement of the keyboard on top of the grand piano; a possible computer set-up; the video screen, loudspeaker, and microphone placements; as well as the percussion set-ups can be seen.
The composer will bring the two laptops (which have the necessary software installed) and soundcards with him.
N.B. For all performances of this work, it is necessary to be in direct contact with the composer. Simon Steen-Andersen must be involved from the beginning in order to plan for his participation in rehearsals and in order to access additional material, such as live mixing equipment, video, software etc. A fee for the composer's participation must be negotiated.