Cork Midsummer Festival: Hauschka finds the key to creative music
In advance of his Cork concert, Hauschka tells about his quest for uniqueness and his work on the soundtrack for Patrick Melrose.
It was in a rainy corner of Ireland that Volker Bertelmann received one of his best reviews. He is still moved by the memory. “I was playing a festival in a small church,” recalls Bertelmann, aka experimental piano player Hauschka, referring to an appearance at Clonmel Junction Festival in 2016 (at Old St Mary’s COI church).
“Afterwards two old ladies came up and told me they had really been taken with it. That affected me greatly. It was so encouraging to know people are responding to what you do.”
He hasn’t always had so positive a response. Hauschka’s specialty is “prepared piano”, in which the sound of the instrument is altered through the strategic placement of objects (cutlery, ping-pong balls, etc) on or between the strings. Zany to look at and initially strange to listen to, the approach has historically divided audiences. Hauschka’s take on the tradition is no different.
“They are alway confused about what is going on,” says the musician, who returns to Ireland for a performance at Cork Midsummer Festival on June 23. “And people are pretty fast in deciding if they like what I’m doing or if they don’t. There’s a clear divergence.”
Fortunately for Hauschka, his work is popular where it counts. He’s in particular demand as a soundtrack composer, following the success of his 2016 score for Oscar-nominated Lion (for which he and collaborator Dustin O’Halloran). His latest compositions for the screen can be heard on Patrick Melrose, the Benedict Cumberbatch-starring Sky Atlantic adaptation of Edward St Aubyn’s semi-autobiographical novels.
Patrick Melrose presents a specific challenge in that it is both a devastating portrayal of drug addiction and a heightened comedy about the absurdities of life (which, it turns out, are even more absurd if you’re off your head on heroin).
“It is a series with five episodes and the episodes are completely different from each other,” he says . “I did a series previously called Gunpowder, about Guy Fawkes and in that the tone was the same in that each episode worked towards the terror attack against the House of Parliament.
“With Patrick Melrose, each book and episode is a different chapter in his life. We decided in the end to use a different ‘colour’ of music for each: there is a choir in one, a harpsichord in another. The idea is to give it diversity.”
He could, if he wanted, stay at home and work on soundtracks year round. With a young family there are times he indeed wishes he had taken this route.
“Touring all the time is tiring,” he says. “I have kids. When I’m touring, they don’t see me at all. After music there is life. I am trying to figure out what feels the best in terms of balance.”
That said, he believes the only way to build a following is to take his music to the people. “The audience is growing. True it is growing slowly but I have a feeling people are sticking with me. When people come and see me… maybe for the nerds it is, as you would say, an old cup of tea. For a lot of people it is fresh and new and exciting. I love that.”
There is a school of thought that the internet has been a blessing to artists such as Hauschka, whose slipstream music is hard to define. The truth, he says, is more complicated.
“The internet has influenced not only my music but also my career. It has helped create a lot of awareness. So streaming is an advantage in a way. But it also creates a more superficial relationship with music.
A throwback to one of my earliest soundcheck videos. I'm so pleased people have continued to enjoy them. I'm currently working on some film scores but I'll have more once I'm back on the road!
— HAUSCHKA (@hauschkamusic) March 1, 2018
***H*** pic.twitter.com/jugxHIJYMH
“If you buy a vinyl record and you put it on, then you are committing to listening to 20 or so minutes of music. And, after that, you have to turn the side.
“If you don’t want to listen to the b-side, you have to grab a new record. That is a very clear decision. You would never just go and take a record and [thoughtlessly] put it on, which is how people might listen to music through streaming.”
Bertelmann is also working on his first conventional piano album, for Sony. It will be a collection of
compositions without prepared aspects, due in 2019. He’s excited about it — and, in general , about moving forward in his career.
“It’s a new angle for me,” he says. “I’m not putting any rubbish in the piano. I’m trying to play something with just the sound of the piano.”
“I can see what I do as a job,” he continues.” At the same time, when I tour, people may have not seen me before. So I want what I do to be unique — to that venue and that place. I’m always searching for that unique experience.”
He was born in a small town in western Germany and lives in Düsseldorf. Among music fans, the city is famous as the home of Kraftwerk, the band that essentially invented modern electronica (and was hugely influential on hip hop).
“Kraftwerk were informed by a lot of the art coming through Düsseldorf,” he says.
“They were soaking in the atmosphere and you can certainly feel that. You’re not here to make easy art – that’s what you feel living in Düsseldorf. You want to create art that means something.”
